



\ 






THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



THE WORKS OF MAURICE MAETERLINCK 

ESSAYS 
The Treasure of the Humble 
Wisdom and Destiny 
The Life of the Bee 
The Buried Temple 
The Double Garden 
The Measure of the Hours 
Death 

On Emerson, and Other Essays 
Our Eternity 
The Unknown Guest 



PLAYS 

Sister Beatrice and Ardiane and Barbe 

Bleue 
Joyzelle and Monna Vanna 
The Blue Bird, a Fairy Play 
Mary Magdalene 

Pe'lleas and Melisande, and Other Plays 
Princess Maleine 
The Intruder, and Other Plays 
aglavaine and Selysette 

HOLIDAY EDITIONS 

Our Friend the Dog 

The Swarm 

The Intelligence of the Flowers 

Chrysanthemums 

The Leaf of Olive 

Thoughts from Maeterlinck 

The Blue Bird 

The Life of the Bee 

News of Spring and Other Nature 

Studies 
Poems 



The Life of the Bee 

BY 

MAURICE MAETERLINCK 

Translated by 
ALFRED SUTRO 



* 



NEW YORK 
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

19*5 






Copyright , igoi 
By Dodd, Mead and Company 

All rights reserved 



Published May, igot 



3*1 a*. 



(X-K^ 



£\ 



Contents 

PAG2 

I. On the Threshold of the Hive 3 
II. The Swarm 37 

III. The Foundation of the City . 131 

IV. The Life of the Bee . , . .159 
V. The Young Queens .... 233 

VI. The Nuptial Flight .... 295 

VII. The Massacre of the Males . 347 

VIII. The Progress of the Race. . . 363 



l?° 



Appendix ..'•......->.« 423 



I 

ON THE THRESHOLD OF 
THE HIVE 



ON THE THRESHOLD OF 
THE HIVE 

[i] 

IT is not my intention to write a trea- 
tise on apiculture, or on practical 
bee-keeping. Excellent works of the 
kind abound in all civilised countries, 
and it were useless to attempt another. 
France has those of Dadant, Georges de 
Layens and Bonnier, Bertrand, Hamet, 
Weber, Clement, the Abbe Collin, etc. 
English-speaking countries have Langs- 
troth, Bevan, Cook, Cheshire, Cowan, 
Root, etc. Germany has Dzierzon, Van 
Berlespoch, Pollmann, Vogel, and many 
others. 

3 



The Life of the Bee 

Nor is this book to be a scientific 
monograph on Apis Mellifica, Ligustica, 
Fasciata, Dorsata, etc., or a collection of 
new observations and studies. I shall 
say scarcely anything that those will not 
know who are somewhat familiar with 
bees. The notes and experiments I have 
made during my twenty years of bee- 
keeping I shall reserve for a more techni- 
cal work; for their interest is necessarily 
of a special and limited nature, and I 
am anxious not to over-burden this 
essay. I wish to speak of the bees very 
simply, as one speaks of a subject one 
knows and loves to those who know 
it not. I do not intend to adorn the 
truth, or merit the just reproach Reaumur 
addressed to his predecessors in the study 
of our honey-flies, whom he accused of 
substituting for the marvellous reality 
marvels that were imaginary and merely 
plausible. The fact that the hive con- 



On the Threshold of the Hive 

tains so much that is wonderful does 
not warrant our seeking to add to its 
wonders. Besides, I myself have now for 
a long time ceased to look for anything 
more beautiful in this world, or more 
interesting, than the truth; or at least 
than the effort one is able to make 
towards the truth. I shall state nothing, 
therefore, that I have not verified myself, 
or that is not so fully accepted in the 
text-books as to render further verifica- 
tion superfluous. My facts shall be as 
accurate as though they appeared in a 
practical manual or scientific monograph, 
but I shall relate them in a somewhat 
livelier fashion than such works would 
allow, shall group them more harmoni- 
ously together, and blend them with 
freer and more mature reflections. The 
reader of this book will not learn there- 
from how to manage a hive ; but he will 
know more or less all that can with any 



The Life of the Bee 

certainty be known of the curious, pro- 
found, and intimate side of its inhabi- 
tants. Nor will this be at the cost of 
what still remains to be learned. I shall 
pass over in silence the hoary traditions 
that, in the country and many a book, 
still constitute the legend of the hive. 
Whenever there be doubt, disagreement, 
hypothesis, when I arrive at the unknown, 
I shall declare it loyally ; you will find 
that we often shall halt before the un- 
known. Beyond the appreciable facts 
of their life we know but little of the 
bees. And the closer our acquaintance 
becomes, the nearer is our ignorance 
brought to us of the depths of their real 
existence ; but such ignorance is better 
than the other kind, which is uncon- 1 
scious, and satisfied. 

Does an analogous work on the bee 
exist ? I believe I have read almost all 
that has been written on bees; but of 
6 



On the Threshold of the Hive 

kindred matter I know only Michelet's 
chapter at the end of his book " The 
Insect," and Ludwig Biichner's essay in 
his "Mind in Animals." Michelet merely 
hovers on the fringe of his subject ; Biich- 
ner's treatise is comprehensive enough 
but contains so many hazardous state- 
ments, so much long-discarded gossip 
and hearsay, that I suspect him of never 
having left his library, never having set 
forth himself to question his . heroines, 
or opened one of the many hundreds of 
rustling, wing-lit hives which we must 
profane before our instinct can be attuned 
to their secret, before we can perceive the 
spirit and atmosphere, perfume and mys- 
tery, of these virgin daughters of toil. 
The book smells not of the bee, or its 
honey ; and has the defects of many a 
learned work, whose conclusions often 
are preconceived, and whose scientific at- 
tainment is composed of a vast array of 
7 



The Life of the Bee 

doubtful anecdotes collected on every 
side. But in this essay of mine we rarely 
shall meet each other ; for our starting- 
point, our aim, and our point of view 
are all very different. 

[*] 

The bibliography of the bee (we will 
begin with the books so as to get rid 
of them as soon as we can and go to 
the source of the books) is very exten- 
sive. From the beginning this strange 
little creature, that lived in a society 
under complicated laws and executed 
prodigious labours in the darkness, at- 
tracted the notice of men. Aristotle, 
Cato, Varro, Pliny, Columella, Palladius 
all studied the bees ; to say nothing of 
Aristomachus, who, according to Cicero, 
watched them for fifty-eight years, and of 
Phyliscus, whose writings are lost. But 
these dealt rather with the legend of the 



On the Threshold of the Hive 

bee ; and all that we can gather there- 
from — which indeed is exceedingly little 
— we may find condensed in the fourth 
book of Virgil's Georgics. 

The real history of the bee begins in 
the seventeenth century, with the discov- 
eries of the great Dutch savant Swammer- 
dam. It is well, however, to add this 
detail, but little known : before Swam- 
merdam a Flemish naturalist named 
Clutius had arrived at certain important 
truths, such as the sole maternity of the 
queen and her possession of the attributes 
of both sexes, but he had left these un- 
proved. Swammerdam founded the true 
methods of scientific investigation; he 
invented the microscope, contrived injec- 
tions to ward off decay, was the first to 
dissect the bees, and by the discovery of 
the ovaries and the oviduct definitely fixed 
the sex of the queen, hitherto looked 
upon as a king, and threw the whole 
9 



The Life of the Bee 

political scheme of the hive into most 
unexpected light by basing it upon mater- 
nity. Finally he produced woodcuts and 
engravings so perfect that to this day they 
serve to illustrate many books on apicul- 
ture. He lived in the turbulent, restless 
Amsterdam of those days, regretting 
" Het Zoete Buiten Leve " — The Sweet 
Life of the Country — and died, worn- 
out with work, at the age of forty-three. 
He wrote in a pious, formal style, with 
beautiful, simple outbursts of a faith that, 
fearful of falling away, ascribed all things 
to the glory of the Creator ; and em- 
bodied his observations and studies in his 
great work "Bybel der Natuure," which 
the doctor Boerhave, a century later, 
caused to be translated from the Dutch 
into Latin under the title of " Biblia 
Naturae/' (Leyden, 1737.) 

Then came Reaumur, who, pursuing 
similar methods, made a vast number of 
10 



On the Threshold of the Hive 

curious experiments and researches in his 
gardens at Charenton, and devoted to the 
bees an entire volume of his cc Notes to 
Serve for a History of Insects." One 
may read it with profit to-day, and with- 
out fatigue. It is clear, direct, and sin- 
cere, and possessed of a certain hard, arid 
charm of its own. He sought especially 
the destruction of ancient errors ; he him- 
self was responsible for several new ones ; 
he partially understood the formation of 
swarms and the political establishment 
of queens ; in a word, he discovered 
many difficult truths, and paved the way 
for the discovery of more. He fully 
appreciated the marvellous architecture 
of the hive ; and what he said on the 
subject has never been better said. It is 
to him, too, that we owe the idea of the 
glass hives, which, having since been 
perfected, enable us to follow the entire 
private life of these fierce insects, whose 
ii 



The Life of the Bee 

work, begun in the dazzling sunshine, 
receives its crown in the darkness. To 
be comprehensive, one should mention 
also the somewhat subsequent works and 
investigations of Charles Bonnet and 
Schirach (who solved the enigma of the 
royal egg) ; but I will keep to the broad 
lines, and pass at once to Francois Huber, 
the master and classic of contemporary- 
apiarian science. 

Huber was born in Geneva in 1750, 
and fell blind in his earliest youth. The 
experiments of Reaumur interested him ; 
he sought to verify them, and soon be- 
coming passionately absorbed in these 
researches, eventually, with the assist- 
ance of an intelligent and faithful servant, 
Francois Burnens, devoted his entire life 
to the study of the bee. In the annals 
of human suffering and human triumph 
there is nothing more touching, no lesson 
more admirable, than the story of this 
12 



On the Threshold of the Hive 

patient collaboration, wherein the one 
who saw only with immaterial light 
guided with his spirit the eyes and hands 
of the other who had the real earthly 
vision ; where he who, as we are assured, 
had never with his own eyes beheld a 
comb of honey, was yet able, notwith- 
standing the veil on his dead eyes that 
rendered double the veil in which nature 
enwraps all things, to penetrate the pro- 
found secrets of the genius that had made 
this invisible comb ; as though to teach 
us that no condition in life can warrant 
our abandoning our desire and search for 
the truth. I will not enumerate all that 
apiarian science owes to Huber; to state 
what it does not owe were the briefer 
task. His " New Observations on Bees," 
of which the first volume was written in 
1789, in the form of letters to Charles 
Bonnet, the second not appearing till 
twenty years later, have remained the 
*3 



The Life of the Bee 

unfailing, abundant treasure into which 
every subsequent writer has dipped. And 
though a few mistakes may be found 
therein, a few incomplete truths ; though 
since his time considerable additions have 
been made to the micrography and prac- 
tical culture of bees, the handling of 
queens, etc., there is not a single one of 
his principal statements that has been 
disproved, or discovered in error; and 
in our actual experience they stand 
untouched, and indeed at its very 
foundation. 

[3] 

Some years of silence followed these 
revelations ; but soon a German clergy- 
man, Dzierzon, discovered parthenogene- 
sis, 1. e. the virginal parturition of queens, 
and contrived the first hive with movable 
combs, thereby enabling the bee-keeper 
henceforth to take his share o* the harvest 



On the Threshold of the Hive 

of honey, without being forced to destroy 
his best colonies and in one instant 
annihilate the work of an entire year. 
This hive, still very imperfect, received 
masterly improvement at the hands of 
Langstroth, who invented the movable 
frame properly so called, which has been 
adopted in America with extraordinary suc- 
cess. Root, Quinby, Dadant, Cheshire, 
De Layens, Cowan, Heddon, Howard, 
etc., added still further and precious im- 
provement. Then it occurred to Mehring 
that if bees were supplied with combs 
that had an artificial waxen foundation, 
they would be spared the labour of 
fashioning the wax and constructing the 
cells, which costs them much honey and 
the best part of their time ; he found that 
the bees accepted these combs most 
readily, and adapted them to their 
requirements. 

M aj or deHruschka invented the Honey- 
*5 



The Life of the Bee 

Extractor, which enables the honey to be 
withdrawn by centrifugal force without 
breaking the combs, etc. And thus, in a 
few years, the methods of apiculture 
underwent a radical change. The capac- 
ity and fruitfulness of the hives were 
trebled. Great and productive apiaries 
arose on every side. An end was put 
to the useless destruction of the most 
industrious cities, and to the odious selec- 
tion of the least fit which was its result. 
Man truly became the master of the 
bees, although furtively, and without their 
knowledge ; directing all things without 
giving an order, receiving obedience but 
not recognition. For the destiny once 
imposed by the seasons he has substituted 
his will. He repairs the injustice of the 
year, unites hostile republics, and equal- 
ises wealth. He restricts or augments 
the births, regulates the fecundity of the 
queen, dethrones her and instals another 
16 



On the Threshold of the Hive 

in her place, after dexterously obtaining 
the reluctant consent of a people who 
would be maddened at the mere suspicion 
of an inconceivable intervention. When 
he thinks fit, he will peacefully violate 
the secret of the sacred chambers, and the 
elaborate, tortuous policy of the palace. 
He will Hvq or six times in succession de- 
prive the bees of the fruit of their labour, 
without harming them, without their be- 
coming discouraged or even impoverished. 
He proportions the store-houses and 
granaries of their dwellings to the harvest 
of flowers that the spring is spreading 
over the dip of the hilis. He compels 
them to reduce the extravagant number 
of lovers who await the birth of the royal 
princesses. In a word he does with them 
what he will, he obtains what he will, pro- 
vided always that what he seeks be in ac- 
cordance with their laws and their virtues ; 
for beyond all the desires of this strange 

2 I 7 



The Life of the Bee 

god who has taken possession of them, 
who is too vast to be seen and too alien 
to be understood, their eyes see further 
than the eyes of the god himself; and 
their one thought is the accomplishment, 
with untiring sacrifice, of the mysterious 
duty of their race. 

[4] 

Let us now, having learned from books 
all that they had to teach us of a very 
ancient history, leave the science others 
have acquired and look at the bees with 
our own eyes. An hour spent in the 
midst of the apiary will be less instruc- 
tive, perhaps ; but the things we shall see 
will be infinitely more stimulating and 
more actual. 

I have not yet forgotten the first apiary 

I saw, where I learned to love the bees. 

It was many years ago, in a large village 

of Dutch Flanders, the sweet and pleasant 

iS 



On the Threshold of the Hive 

country whose love for brilliant colour 
rivals that of Zealand even, the concave 
mirror of Holland; a country that gladly 
spreads out before us, as so many pretty, 
thoughtful toys, her illuminated gables, 
and waggons, and towers ; her cupboards 
and clocks that gleam at the end of the 
passage; her little trees marshalled in line 
along quays and canal-banks, waiting, one 
almost might think, for some quiet, benef- 
icent ceremony; her boats and her barges 
with sculptured poops, her flower-like 
doors and windows, immaculate dams, 
and elaborate, many-coloured drawbridges ; 
and her little varnished houses, bright as 
new pottery, from which bell-shaped 
dames come forth, all a-glitter with silver 
and gold, to milk the cows in the white- 
hedged fields, or spread the linen on 
flowery lawns, cut into patterns of oval 
and lozenge, and most astoundingly 
green. 

19 



The Life of the Bee 

To this spot, where life would seem 
more restricted than elsewhere — if it be 
possible for life indeed to become re- 
stricted — a sort of aged philosopher had 
retired; an old man somewhat akin to 
Virgil's — 

" Man equal to kings, and approaching the gods ; " 

whereto Lafontaine might have added, — 

"And, like the gods, content and at rest." 

Here had he built his refuge, being a 
little weary ; not disgusted, for the large 
aversions are unknown to the sage ; but a 
little weary of interrogating men, whose 
answers to the only interesting questions 
one can put concerning nature and her 
veritable laws are far less simple than 
those that are given by animals and 
plants. His happiness, like the Scythian 
philosopher's, lay all in the beauties of 
his garden ; and best-loved and visited 
most often, was the apiary, composed of 



30 



On the Threshold of the Hive 

twelve domes of straw, some of which he 
had painted a bright pink, and some a 
clear yellow, but most of all a tender 
blue ; having noticed, long before Sir 
John Lubbock's demonstrations, the bees' 
fondness for this colour. 

These hives stood against the wall of 
the house, in the angle formed by one of 
those pleasant and graceful Dutch kit- 
chens whose earthenware dresser, all bright 
with copper and tin, reflected itself through 
the open door on to the peaceful canal. 
And the water, burdened with these fami- 
liar images beneath its curtain of poplars, 
led one's eyes to a calm horizon of mills 
and of meadows. 

Here, as in all places, the hives lent a 
new meaning to the flowers and the silence, 
the balm of the air and the rays of the 
sun. One seemed to have drawn very 
near to the festival spirit of nature. One 
was content to rest at this radiant cross- 

21 



The Life of the Bee 

road, where the aerial ways converge and 
divide that the busy and tuneful bearers 
of all country perfumes unceasingly travel 
from dawn unto dusk. One heard the 
musical voice of the garden, whose love- 
liest hours revealed their rejoicing soul 
and sang of their gladness. One came 
hither, to the school of the bees, to be 
taught the preoccupations of all-powerful 
nature, the harmonious concord of the 
three kingdoms, the indefatigable organi- 
sation of life, and the lesson of ardent and 
disinterested work ; and another lesson 
too, with a moral as good, that the heroic 
workers taught there, and emphasised, as 
it were, with the fiery darts of their 
myriad wings, was to appreciate the 
somewhat vague savour of leisure, to 
enjoy the almost unspeakable delights 
of those immaculate days that revolved 
on themselves in the fields of space, 
forming merely a transparent globe, as 

22 



On the Threshold of the Hive 

void of memory as the happiness with- 
out alloy. 

[5] 

In order to follow, as simply as possible, 
the life of the bees through the year, we 
will take a hive that awakes in the spring 
and duly starts on its labours ; and then 
we shall meet, in their natural order, all 
the great episodes, viz. : the formation 
and departure of the swarm, the founda- 
tion of the new city, the birth, combat 
and nuptial flight of the young queens, the 
massacre of the males, and finally, the 
return of the sleep of winter. With each 
of these episodes there will go the neces- 
sary explanations as to the laws, habits, 
peculiarities and events that produce and 
accompany it; so that, when arrived at 
the end of the bee's short year, which 
extends only from April to the last days 
of September, we shall have gazed upon 
23 



The Life of the Bee 

all the mysteries of the palace of honey. 
Before we open it, therefore, and throw a 
general glance around, we only need say 
that the hive is composed of a queen, the 
mother of all her people ; of thousands 
of workers or neuters who are incomplete 
and sterile females ; and lastly of some 
hundreds of males, from whom one shall 
be chosen as the sole and unfortunate 
consort of the queen that the workers 
will elect in the future, after the more or 
less voluntary departure of the reigning 
mother. 

[6] 

The first time that we open a hive there 
comes over us an emotion akin to that we 
might feel at profaning some unknown 
object, charged perhaps with dreadful 
surprise, as a tomb. A legend of menace 
and peril still clings to the bees. There 
is the distressful recollection of her sting, 
24 



On the Threshold of the Hive 

which produces a pain so characteristic that 
one knows not wherewith to compare it ; 
a kind of destroying dryness, a flame of 
the desert rushing over the wounded limb, 
as though these daughters of the sun had 
distilled a dazzling poison from their 
father's angry rays, in order more effec- 
tively to defend the treasure they gather 
from his beneficent hours. 

It is true that were some one who neither 
knows nor respects the customs and char- 
acter of the bee suddenly to fling open 
the hive, it would turn at once into a 
burning bush of heroism and anger ; but 
the slight amount of skill needed to 
handle it with impunity can be most 
readily acquired. Let but a little smoke 
be deftly applied, much coolness and 
gentleness be shown, and our well-armed 
workers will suffer themselves to be 
despoiled without dreaming of drawing 
their sting. It is not the fact, as some 
*5 



The Life of the Bee 

have maintained, that the bees recognise 
their master ; nor have they any fear of 
man ; but at the smell of the smoke, at 
the large slow gestures that traverse their 
dwellings without threatening them, they 
imagine that this is not the attack of an 
enemy against whom defence is pos- 
sible, but that it is a force or a natural 
catastrophe whereto they do well to 
submit. 

Instead of vainly struggling, therefore, 
they do what they can to safeguard the 
future ; and, obeying a foresight that for 
once is in error, they fly to their reserves 
of honey, into which they eagerly dip in 
order to possess within themselves the 
wherewithal to start a new city, immedi- 
ately and no matter where, should the 
ancient one be destroyed or they be 
compelled to forsake it. 



26 



On the Threshold of the Hive 

[7] 

The first impression of the novice 
before whom an observation-hive 1 is 
opened will be one of some disappoint- 
ment. He had been told that this little 
glass case contained an unparalleled activ- 
ity, an infinite number of wise laws, 
and a startling amalgam of mystery, ex- 
perience, genius, calculation, science, of 
various industries, of certitude and pre- 
science, of intelligent habits and curious 
feelings and virtues. All that he sees is 
a confused mass of little reddish groups, 

1 By observation-hive is meant a hive of glass, 
furnished with black curtains or shutters. The best 
kind have only one comb, thus permitting both faces 
to be studied. These hives can be placed in a draw- 
ing-room, library, etc., without inconvenience or dan- 
ger. The bees that inhabit the one I have in my 
study in Paris are able even in the stony desert of that 
great city, to find the wherewithal to nourish them- 
selves and to prosper. 

37 



The Life of the Bee 

somewhat resembling roasted coffee-ber- 
ries, or bunches of raisins piled against 
the glass. They look more dead than 
alive ; their movements are slow, inco- 
herent, and incomprehensible. Can these 
be the wonderful drops of light he had 
seen but a moment ago, unceasingly flash- 
ing and sparkling, as they darted among 
the pearls and the gold of a thousand 
wide-open calyces ? 

They appear to be shivering in the 
darkness, to be numbed, suffocated, so 
closely are they huddled together; one 
might fancy they were ailing captives, or 
queens dethroned, who have had their 
one moment of glory in the midst of 
their radiant garden, and are now com- 
pelled to return to the shamefil squalor 
of their poor overcrowded home. 

It is with them as with all that is 
deeply real ; they must be studied, and 
one must learn how to study them. The 
28 



On the Threshold of the Hive 

inhabitant of another planet who should 
see men and women coming and going 
almost imperceptibly through our streets, 
crowding at certain times around certain 
buildings, or waiting for one knows 
not what, without apparent movement, 
in the depths of their dwellings, might 
conclude therefrom that they, too, were 
miserable and inert. It takes time to 
distinguish the manifold activity con- 
tained in this inertia. 

And indeed every one of the little 
almost motionless groups in the hive is 
incessantly working, each at a different 
trade. Repose is unknown to any ; and 
such, for instance, as seem the most tor- 
pid, as they hang in dead clusters against 
the glass, are intrusted with the most 
mysterious and fatiguing task of all : it is 
they who secrete and form the wax. But 
the details of this universal activity will 
be given in their place. For the mo- 
29 



The Life of the Bee 

ment we need only call attention to 
the essential trait in the nature of the 
bee which accounts for the extraordi nary- 
agglomeration of the various workers. 
The bee is above all, and even to a 
greater extent than the ant, a creature 
of the crowd. She can live only in the 
midst of a multitude. When she leaves 
the hive, which is so densely packed that 
she has to force her way with blows of 
her head through the living walls that 
enclose her„ she departs from her proper 
element. She will dive for an instant 
into flower-filled space, as the swimmer 
will dive into the sea that is filled with 
pearls, but under pain of death it 
behoves her at regular intervals to re- 
turn and breathe the crowd as the swim- 
mer must return atvd breathe the air. 
labiate her, and however abundant the 
food or favourable the temperature, she 
will expire in a few days not of hunger 
30 



On the Threshold of the Hive 

or cold, but of loneliness. From the 
crowd, from the city, she derives an 
invisible aliment that is as necessary 
to her as honey. This craving will 
help to expkir "he spirit of the laws of 
the hnr, B For in them the individual is 
nothing, her existence conditional only, 
and herself, for one indifferent moment, 
a winged organ of the race. Her whole 
life is an entire sacrifice to the manifold, 
everlasting being whereof she forms part. 
It is strange to note that it was not always 
so. We find even to-day, among the 
melliferous hymenoptera, all the stages 
of progressive civilisation of our own do- 
mestic bee. At the bottom of the scale 
we find her working alone, in wretched- 
ness, often not seeing her offspring (the 
Prosopis, the Colletes, etc.) ; sometimes 
living in the midst of the limited 
family that she produces annually (as in 
the case of the humble-bee). Then she 
3 1 



The Life of the Bee 

forms temporary associations (the Pan- 
urgi, the Dasypodoe, the Hacliti, etc.) 
and at last we arrive, through successive 
stages, at the almost perfect but pitiless 
society of our hives, where the individual 
is entirely merged in the republic, and 
the republic in its turn invariably sacri- 
ficed to the abstract and immortal city of 
the future. 

[8] 

Let us not too hastily deduce from 
these facts conclusions that apply to man. 
He possesses the power of withstanding 
certain of nature's laws ; and to know 
whether such resistance be right or wrong 
is the gravest and obscurest point in his 
morality. But it is deeply interesting 
to discover what the will of nature may 
be in a different world ; and this wiU 
is revealed with extraordinary clearness in 
the evolution of the hymenoptera, which, 
32 



On the Threshold of the Hive 

of all the inhabitants of this globe, possess 
the highest degree of intellect after that 
of man. The aim of nature is manifestly 
the improvement of the race ; but no 
less manifest is her inability, or refusal, 
to obtain such improvement except at 
the cost of the liberty, the rights, and 
the happiness of the individual. In 
proportion as a society organises itself, 
and rises in the scale, so does a shrinkage 
enter the private life of each one of its 
members. Where there is progress, it 
is the result only of a more and more 
complete sacrifice of the individual to 
the general interest. Each one is com- 
pelled, first of all, to renounce his vices, 
which are acts of independence. For 
instance, at the last stage but one of 
apiarian civilisation, we find the humble- 
bees, which are like our cannibals. The 
adult workers are incessantly hovering 
around the eggs, which they seek to 
33 



The Life of the Bee 

devour, and the mother has to display 
the utmost stubbornness in their defence. 
Then having freed himself from his most 
dangerous vices, each individual has to 
acquire a certain number of more and 
more painful virtues. Among the humble- 
bees, for instance, the workers do not 
dream of renouncing love, whereas our 
domestic bee lives in a state of perpetual 
chastity. And indeed we soon shall show 
how much more she has to abandon, in 
exchange for the comfort and security of 
the hive, for its architectural, economic, 
and political perfection ; and we shall re- 
turn to the evolution of the hymenoptera 
in the chapter devoted to the progress of 
the species. 



34 



II 

THE SWARM 



35 



II 

THE SWARM 

[9l 

WE will now, so as to draw more 
closely to nature, consider the 
different episodes of the swarm as they 
come to pass in an ordinary hive, which 
is ten or twenty times more populous 
than an observation one, and leaves the 
bees entirely free and untrammelled. 

Here, then, they have shaken off the 
torpor of winter. The queen started 
laying again in the very first days of 
February, and the workers have flocked 
to the willows and nut-trees, gorse and 
violets, anemones and lungworts. Then 
spring invades the earth, and cellar and 
stream with honey and pollen, while each 
37 



The Life of the Bee 

day beholds the birth of thousands of 
bees. The overgrown males now all sally 
forth from their cells, and disport them- 
selves on the combs ; and so crowded 
does the too prosperous city become that 
hundreds of belated workers, coming back 
from the flowers towards evening, will 
vainly seek shelter within, and will be 
forced to spend the night on the threshold, 
where they will be decimated by the cold. 
Restlessness seizes the people, and the 
old queen begins to stir. She feels 
that a new destiny is being prepared. 
She has religiously fulfilled her duty as a 
good creatress ; and from this duty done 
there result only tribulation and sorrow. 
An invincible power menaces her tran- 
quillity ; she will soon be forced to quit 
this city of hers, where she has reigned. 
But this city is her work, it is she, her- 
self. She is not its queen in the sense in 
which men use the word. She issues no 
33 



The Swarm 

orders ; she obeys, as meekly as the 
humblest of her subjects, the masked 
power, sovereignly wise, that for the 
present, and till we attempt to locate it, 
we will term the " spirit of the hive." 
But she is the unique organ of love ; she 
is the mother of the city. She founded 
it amid uncertainty and poverty. She 
has peopled it with her own substance; 
and all who move within its walls — 
workers, males, larvae, nymphs, and the 
young princesses whose approaching birth 
will hasten her own departure, one of 
them being already designed as her suc- 
cessor by the "spirit of the hive" — 
all these have issued from her flanks. 

[10] 

What is this "spirit of the hive" — 

where does it reside? It is not like the 

special instinct that teaches the bird to 

construct its well planned nest, and then 

39 



The Life of the Bee 

seek other skies when the day for mi- 
gration returns. Nor is it a kind of 
mechanical habit of the race, or blind 
craving for life, that will fling the bees 
upon any wild hazard the moment an 
unforeseen event shall derange the accus- 
tomed order of phenomena. On the 
contrary, be the event never so masterful, 
the " spirit of the hive " still will follow 
it, step by step, like an alert and quick- 
witted slave, who is able to derive ad- 
vantage even from his master's most 
dangerous orders. 

It disposes pitilessly of the wealth and 
the happiness, the liberty and life, of all 
this winged people ; and yet with discre- 
tion, as though governed itself by some 
great duty. It regulates day by day the 
number of births, and contrives that these 
shall strictly accord with the number of 
flowers that brighten the country-side. 
It decrees the queen's deposition or warns 
40 



The Swarm 

her that she must depart ; it compels her 
to bring her own rivals into the world, 
and rears them royally, protecting them 
from their mother's political hatred. So, 
too, in accordance with the generosity of 
the flowers, the age of the spring, and 
the probable dangers of the nuptial flight, 
will it permit or forbid the first-born 
of the virgin princesses to slay in their 
cradles her younger sisters, who are sing- 
ing the song of the queens. At other 
times, when the season wanes, and flowery 
hours grow shorter, it will command the 
workers themselves to slaughter the whole 
imperial brood, that the era of revolutions 
may close, and work become the sole 
object of all. The cc spirit of the hive " 
is prudent and thrifty, but by no means 
parsimonious. And thus, aware, it would 
seem, that nature's laws are somewhat 
wild and extravagant in all that pertains 
to love, it tolerates, during summer days 
41 



The Life of the Bee 

of abundance, the embarrassing presence 
in the hive of three or four hundred 
males, from whose ranks the queen about 
to be born shall select her lover ; three 
or four hundred foolish, clumsy, useless, 
noisy creatures, who are pretentious, glut- 
tonous, dirty, coarse, totally and scan- 
dalously idle, insatiable, and enormous. 

But after the queen's impregnation, 
when flowers begin to close sooner, and 
open later, the spirit one morning will 
coldly decree the simultaneous and gen- 
eral massacre of every male. It regulates 
the workers' labours, with due regard to 
their age ; it allots their task to the nurses 
who tend the nymphs and the larvae, the 
ladies of honour who wait on the queen 
and never allow her out of their sight ; 
the house-bees who air, refresh, or heat 
the hive by fanning their wings, and 
hasten the evaporation of the honey that 
may be too highly charged with water; 
42 



The Swarm 

the architects, masons, wax-workers, and 
sculptors who form the chain and con- 
struct the combs; the foragers who sally- 
forth to the flowers in search of the nectar 
that turns into honey, of the pollen that 
feeds the nymphs and the larvae, the pro- 
polis that welds and strengthens the build- 
ings of the city, or the water and salt 
required by the youth of the nation. Its 
orders have gone to the chemists who en- 
sure the preservation of the honey by 
letting a drop of formic acid fall in from 
the end of their sting ; to the capsule- 
makers who seal down the cells when the 
treasure is ripe, to the sweepers who 
maintain public places and streets most 
irreproachably clean, to the bearers whose 
duty it is to remove the corpses ; and 
to the amazons of the guard who keep 
watch on the threshold by night and by 
day, question comers and goers, recognise 
the novices who return from their very 
41 



The Life of the Bee 

first flight, scare away vagabonds, ma- 
rauders and loiterers, expel all intruders, 
attack redoubtable foes in a body, and, if 
need be, barricade the entrance. 

Finally, it is the spirit of the hive that 
fixes the hour of the great annual sacrifice 
to the genius of the race : the hour, that 
is, of the swarm ; when we find a whole 
people, who have attained the topmost pin- 
nacle of prosperity and power, suddenly 
abandoning to the generation to come 
their wealth and their palaces, their homes 
and the fruits of their labour ; themselves 
content to encounter the hardships and 
perils of a new and distant country. This 
act, be it conscious or not, undoubtedly 
passes the limits of human morality. 
Its result will sometimes be ruin, but 
poverty always; and the thrice-happy 
city is scattered abroad in obedience to 
a law superior to its own happiness. 
Where has this law been decreed, which. 



The Swarm 

as wc soon shall find, is by no means as 
blind and inevitable as one might believe ? 
Where, in what assembly, what council, 
what intellectual and moral sphere, does 
this spirit reside to whom all must submit, 
itself being vassal to an heroic duty, to 
an intelligence whose eyes are persistently 
fixed on the future ? 

It comes to pass with the bees as with 
most of the things in this world; we 
remark some few of their habits ; we 
say they do this, they work in such and 
such fashion, their queens are born thus, 
their workers are virgin, they swarm at 
a certain time. And then we imagine 
we know them, and ask nothing more. 
We watch them hasten from flower to 
flower, we see the constant agitation within 
the hive ; their life seems very simple to 
us, and bounded, like every life, by the 
instinctive cares of reproduction and nour- 
ishment But let the eye draw near, and 
45 



The Life of the Bee 

endeavour to see ; and at once the least 
phenomenon of all becomes overpower- 
ingly complex ; we are confronted by the 
enigma of intellect, of destiny, will, aim, 
means, causes ; the incomprehensible or- 
ganisation of the most insignificant act 
of life. 

[»] 

Our hive, then, is preparing to swarm ; 
making ready for the great immolation to 
the exacting gods of the race. In obe- 
dience to the order of the spirit — an order 
that to us may well seem incomprehen- 
sible, for it is entirely opposed to all our 
own instincts and feelings — 60,000 or 
70,000 bees out of the 80,000 or 90,000 
that form the whole population, will aban- 
don the maternal city at the prescribed 
hour. They will not leave at a moment 
of despair ; or desert, with sudden and 
wild resolve, a home laid waste by famine, 
46 



The Swarm 

disease, or war. No, the exile has long 
been planned, and the favourable hour 
patiently awaited. Were the hive poor, 
had it suffered from pillage or storm, had 
misfortune befallen the royal family, the 
bees would not forsake it. They leave it 
only when it has attained the apogee of 
its prosperity ; at a time when, after the 
arduous labours of the spring, the im- 
mense palace of wax has its 120,000 well- 
arranged cells overflowing with new honey, 
and with the many-coloured flour, known 
as cc bees' bread," on which nymphs and 
larvae are fed. 

Never is the hive more beautiful than 
on the eve of its heroic renouncement, in 
its unrivalled hour of fullest abundance 
and joy; serene for all its apparent excite- 
ment and feverishness. 

Let us endeavour to picture it to our- 
selves, not as it appears to the bees, — for 
we cannot tell in what magical, formidable 
47 



The Life of the Bee 

fashion things may be reflected in the 
6,000 or 7,000 facets of their lateral eyes 
and the triple cyclopean eye on their brow, 
— but as it would seem to us, were we of 
their stature. From the height of a dome 
more colossal than that of St. Peter's at 
Rome waxen walls descend to the ground, 
balanced in the void and the darkness ; 
gigantic and manifold, vertical and parallel 
geometric constructions, to which, for rela- 
tive precision, audacity, and vastness, no 
human structure is comparable. Each of 
these walls, whose substance still is immac- 
ulate and fragrant, of virginal, silvery fresh- 
ness, contains thousands of cells, that are 
stored with provisions sufficient to feed the 
whole people for several weeks. Here, 
lodged in transparent cells, are the pollens, 
love-ferment of every flower of spring, 
making brilliant splashes of red and yellow, 
of black and mauve. Close by, in twenty 
thousand reservoirs, sealed with a seal 
48 



The Swarm 

that shall only be broken on days of su- 
preme distress, the honey of April is 
stored, most limpid and perfumed of all, 
wrapped round with long and magnificent 
embroidery of gold, whose borders hang 
stiff and rigid. Still lower the honey of 
May matures, in great open vats, by whose 
side watchful cohorts maintain an incessant 
current of air. In the centre, and far 
from the light whose diamond rays steal 
in through the only opening, in the 
warmest part of the hive, there stands the 
abode of the future ; here does it sleep, 
and wake. For this is the royal domain 
of the brood-cells, set apart for the queen 
and her acolytes ; about 10,000 cells 
wherein the eggs repose, 15,000 or 16,000 
chambers tenanted by larvae, 40,000 dwel- 
lings inhabited by white nymphs to whom 
thousands of nurses minister. 1 And fin- 

1 The figures given here are scrupulously exact. 
They are those of a well-filled hive in full prosperity 
4 49 



The Life of the Bee 

ally, in the holy of holies of these parts, 
are the three, four, six, or twelve sealed 
palaces, vast in size compared with the 
others, where the adolescent princesses lie 
who await their hour, wrapped in a kind 
of shroud, all of them motionless and 
pale, and fed in the darkness. 

[12] 

On the day, then, that the Spirit of the 
Hive has ordained, a certain part of the 
population will go forth, selected in ac- 
cordance with sure and immovable laws, 
and make way for hopes that as yet are 
formless. In the sleeping city there 
remain the males, from whose ranks the 
royal lover shall come, the very young 
bees that tend the brood-cells, and some 
thousands of workers who continue to 
forage abroad, to guard the accumu- 
lated treasure, and preserve the moral 
traditions of the hive. For each hive 
5° 



The Swarm 

has its own code of morals. There are 
Borne that are very virtuous and some 
that are very perverse ; and a careless 
bee-keeper will often corrupt his people, 
destroy their respect for the property 
of others, incite them to pillage, and 
induce in them habits of conquest and 
idleness which will render them sources 
of danger to all the little republics around. 
These things result from the bee's dis- 
covery that work among distant flowers, 
whereof many hundreds must be visited to 
form one drop of honey, is not the only 
or promptest method of acquiring wealth, 
but that it is easier to enter ill-guarded 
cities by stratagem, or force her way 
into others too weak for self-defence. 
Nor is it easy to restore to the paths 
of duty a hive that has become thus 
depraved. 



S* 



The Life of the Bee 

[i3l 

All things go to prove that it is not 
the queen, but the spirit of the hive, 
that decides on the swarm. With this 
queen of ours it happens as with many 
a chief among men, who though he ap- 
pear to give orders, is himself obliged 
to obey commands far more mysterious, 
far more inexplicable, than those he 
issues to his subordinates. The hour 
once fixed, the spirit will probably let 
it be known at break of dawn, or the 
previous night, if indeed not two nights 
before ; for scarcely has the sun drunk 
in the first drops of dew when a most 
unaccustomed stir, whose meaning the 
bee-keeper rarely will fail to grasp, is 
to be noticed within and around the 
buzzing city. At times one would al- 
most appear to detect a sign of dispute, 
hesitation, recoil. It will happen even 
52 



The Swarm 

that for day after day a strange emotion, 
apparently without cause, will appear and 
vanish in this transparent, golden throng. 
Has a cloud that we cannot see crept 
across the sky that the bees are watching ; 
or is their intellect battling with a new 
regret ? Does a winged council debate 
the necessity of the departure ? Of this 
we know nothing ; as we know nothing 
of the manner in which the spirit conveys 
its resolution to the crowd. Certain as 
it may seem that the bees communicate 
with each other, we know not whether 
this be done in human fashion. It is 
possible even that their own refrain may 
be inaudible to them : the murmur that 
comes to us heavily laden with perfume 
of honey, the ecstatic whisper of fairest 
summer days that the bee-keeper loves so 
well, the festival song of labour that rises 
and falls around the hive in the crystal 
of the hour, and might almost be the 
53 



The Life of the Bee 

chant of the eager flowers, hymn of their 
gladness and echo of their soft fragrance, 
the voice of the white carnations, the 
marjoram, and the thyme. They have, 
however, a whole gamut of sounds that 
we can distinguish, ranging from pro- 
found delight to menace, distress, and 
anger ; they have the ode of the queen, 
the song of abundance, the psalms of 
grief, and, lastly, the long and mysterious 
war-cries the adolescent princesses send 
forth during the combats and massacres 
that precede the nuptial flight. May this 
be a fortuitous music that fails to attain 
their inward silence ? In any event they 
seem not the least disturbed at the noises 
we make near the hive ; but they regard 
these perhaps as not of their world, and 
possessed of no interest for them. It is 
possible that we on our side hear only 
a fractional part of the sounds that the 
bees produce, and that they have many 
54 



The Swarm 

harmonies to which our ears are not 
attuned. We soon shall see with what 
startling rapidity they are able to under 
stand each other, and adopt concerted 
measures, when, for instance, the great 
honey thief, the huge sphinx atropos, the 
sinister butterfly that bears a death's head 
on its back, penetrates into the hive, 
humming its own strange note, which acts 
as a kind of irresistible incantation; the 
news spreads quickly from group to group, 
and from the guards at the threshold to 
the workers on the furthest combs, the 
whole population quivers. 

[H] 

It was for a long time believed that 
when these wise bees, generally so pru- 
dent, so far-sighted and economical, aban- 
doned the treasures of their kingdom and 
flung themselves upon the uncertainties 
of life, they were yielding to a kind of 
S5 



The Life of the Bee 

irresistible folly, a mechanical impulse, a 
law of the species, a decree of nature, or 
to the force that for all creatures lies hid- 
den in the revolution of time. It is our 
habit, in the case of the bees no less than 
our own, to regard as fatality all that we 
do not as yet understand. But now that 
the hive has surrendered two or three of 
its material secrets, we have discovered 
that this exodus is neither instinctive nor 
inevitable. It is not a blind emigration, 
but apparently the well-considered sacrifice 
of the present generation in favour of the 
generation to come. The bee-keeper has 
only to destroy in their cells the young 
queens that still are inert, and, at the same 
time, if nymphs and larvae abound, to 
enlarge the store-houses and dormitories 
of the nation, for this unprofitable tumult 
instantaneously to subside, for work to 
be at once resumed, and the flowers re- 
visited ; while the old queen, who now is 
5* 



A 



The Swarm 

essential again, with no successor to hope 
for, or perhaps to fear, will renounce 
for this year her desire for the light of 
the sun. Reassured as to the future of 
the activity that will soon spring into life, 
she will tranquilly resume her maternal 
labours, which consist in the laying of two 
or three thousand eggs a day, as she passes, 
in a methodical spiral, from cell to cell, 
omitting none, and never pausing to 
rest. 

Where is the fatality here, save in the 
love of the race of to-day for the race of 
to-morrow? This fatality exists in the 
human species also, but its extent and 
power seem infinitely less. Among men 
it never gives rise to sacrifices as great, as 
unanimous, or as complete. What far- 
seeing fatality, taking the place of this one, 
do we ourselves obey ? We know not ; 
as we know not the being who watches us 
as- we watch the bees. 
57 



The Life of the Bee 

[15] 

But the hive that we have selected is 
disturbed in its history by no interference 
of man ; and as the beautiful day advances 
with radiant and tranquil steps beneath 
the trees, its ardour, still bathed in dew, 
makes the appointed hour seem laggard. 
Over the whole surface of the golden cor- 
ridors that divide the parallel walls the 
workers are busily making preparation 
for the journey. And each one will first 
of all burden herself with provision of 
honey sufficient for five or six days. From 
this honey that they bear within them they 
will distil, by a chemical process still unex- 
plained, the wax required for the immediate 
construction of buildings. They will pro- 
vide themselves also with a certain amount 
of propolis, a kind of resin with which they 
will seal all the crevices in the new dwell- 
ing, strengthen weak places, varnish the 
58 



The Swarm 

walls, and exclude the light ; for the bees 
love to work in almost total obscurity, 
guiding themselves with their many-faceted 
eyes, or with their antennae perhaps, the 
seat, it would seem, of an unknown sense 
that fathoms and measures the darkness. 

[16] 

They are not without prescience, there- 
fore, of what is to befall them on this the 
most dangerous day of all their existence. 
Absorbed by the cares, the prodigious 
perils of this mighty adventure, they will 
have no time now to visit the gardens and 
meadows ; and to-morrow, and after to- 
morrow, it may happen that rain may fall, 
or there may be wind ; that their wings 
may be frozen or the flowers refuse to 
open. Famine and death would await 
them were it not for this foresight of 
theirs. None would come to their help, 
nor would they seek help of any. For 
59 



The Life of the Bee 

one city knows not the other, and assist- 
ance never is given. And even though 
the bee-keeper deposit the hive, in which 
he has gathered the old queen and her 
attendant cluster of bees, by the side of 
the abode they have but this moment 
quitted, they would seem, be the disaster 
never so great that shall now have befallen 
them, to have wholly forgotten the peace 
and the happy activity that once they had 
known there, the abundant wealth and the 
safety that had then been their portion ; 
and all, one by one, and down to the last 
of them, will perish of hunger and cold 
around their unfortunate queen rather 
than return to the home of their birth, 
whose sweet odour of plenty, the fragrance, 
indeed, of their own past assiduous labour, 
reaches them even in their distress. 



60 



The Swarm 

[*7] 

That is a thing, some will say, that 
men would not do, — a proof that the 
bee, notwithstanding the marvels of its 
organisation, still is lacking in intellect and 
veritable consciousness. Is this so certain ? 
Other beings, surely, may possess an intel- 
lect that differs from ours, and produces 
different results, without therefore being 
inferior. And besides, are we, even in 
this little human parish of ours, such 
infallible judges of matters that pertain to 
the spirit ? Can we so readily divine 
the thoughts that may govern the two 
or three people we may chance to see 
moving and talking behind a closed win- 
dow, when their words do not reach us? 
Or let us suppose that an inhabitant of 
Venus or Mars were to contemplate us 
from the height of a mountain, and watch 
the little black specks that we form in 
61 



The Life of the Bee 

space, as we come and go in the streets 
and squares of our towns. Would the 
mere sight of our movements, our build- 
ings, machines, and canals, convey to him 
any precise idea of our morality, intellect, 
our manner of thinking, and loving, and 
hoping, — in a word, of our real and inti- 
mate self? All he could do, like our- 
selves when we gaze at the hive, would be 
to take note of some facts that seem very 
surprising; and from these facts to deduce 
conclusions probably no less erroneous, 
no less uncertain, than those that we choose 
to form concerning the bee. 

This much at least is certain ; our " little 
black specks " would not reveal the vast 
moral direction, the wonderful unity, that 
are so apparent in the hive. " Whither 
do they tend, and what is it they do ? " he 
would ask, after years and centuries of 
patient watching. "What is the aim of 
their life, or its pivot ? Do they obey 
62 



The Swarm 

some God? I can see nothing that 
governs their actions. The little things 
that one day they appear to collect and 
build up, the next they destroy and scatter. 
They come and they go, they meet and 
disperse, but one knows not what it is they 
seek. In numberless cases the spectacle 
they present is altogether inexplicable. 
There are some, for instance, who, as 
it were, seem scarcely to stir from their 
place. They are to be distinguished 
by their glossier coat, and often too by 
their more considerable bulk. They 
occupy buildings ten or twenty times 
larger than ordinary dwellings, and richer, 
and more ingeniously fashioned. Every 
day they spend many hours at their meals, 
which sometimes indeed are prolonged far 
into the night. They appear to be held 
in extraordinary honour by those who 
approach them ; men come from the 
neighbouring houses, bringing provisions, 



The Life of the Bee 

and even from the depths of the country, 
laden with presents. One can only 
assume that these persons must be indis- 
pensable to the race, to which they render 
essential service, although our means of 
investigation have not yet enabled us to 
discover what the precise nature of this 
service may be. There are others, again, 
who are incessantly engaged in the most 
wearisome labour, whether it be in great 
sheds full of wheels that forever turn round 
and round, or close by the shipping, or in 
obscure hovels, or on small plots of earth 
that from sunrise to sunset they are con- 
stantly delving and digging. We are led to 
believe that this labour must be an offence, 
and punishable. For the persons guilty 
of it are housed in filthy, ruinous, squalid 
cabins. They are clothed in some colour- 
less hide. So great does their ardour 
appear for this noxious, or at any rate 
useless activity, that the) scarcely allow 
64 



The Swarm 

themselves time to eat or to sleep. In 
numbers they are to the others as a thou- 
sand to one. It is remarkable that the 
species should have been able to survive 
to this day under conditions so unfavour- 
able to its development. It should be 
mentioned, however, that apart from this 
characteristic devotion to their wearisome 
toil, they appear inoffensive and docile; 
and satisfied with the leavings of those 
who evidently are the guardians, if not 
the saviours, of the race." 

[i8] 

Is it not strange that the hive, which 
we vaguely survey from the height of 
another world, should provide our first 
questioning glance with so sure and pro- 
found a reply? Must we not admire the 
manner in which the thought or the god 
that the bees obey is at once revealed by 
their edifices, wrought with such striking 
5 6-, 



The Life of the Bee 

conviction, by their customs and laws, 
their political and economical organisation, 
their virtues, and even their cruelties ? 
Nor is this god, though it be perhaps the 
only one to which man has as yet never 
offered serious worship, by any means the 
least reasonable or the least legitimate 
that we can conceive. The god of the 
bees is the future. When we, in our 
study of human history, endeavour to 
gauge the moral force or greatness of a 
people or race, we have but one standard 
of measurement — the dignity and perma- 
nence of their ideal, and the abnegation 
wherewith they pursue it. Have we often 
encountered an ideal more conformable to 
the desires of the universe, more widely 
manifest, more disinterested or sublime; 
have we often discovered an abnegation 
more complete and heroic ? 



66 



The Swarm 

[19] 

Strange little republic, that, for all its 
logic and gravity, its matured conviction 
and prudence, still falls victim to so vast 
and precarious a dream ! Who shall tell 
us, O little people that are so profoundly 
in earnest, that have fed on the warmth 
and the light and on nature's purest, the 
soul of the flowers, wherein matter foi 
once seems to smile, and put forth it? 
most wistful effort towards beauty and hap 
piness, — who shall tell us what prob- 
lems you have resolved, but we not yet, 
what certitudes you have acquired that 
we still have to conquer? And if you 
have truly resolved these problems, and 
acquired these certitudes, by the aid of 
some blind and primitive impulse and 
not through the intellect, then to what 
enigma, more insoluble still, are you not 
urging us on ? Little city abounding 
67 



The Life of the Bee 

in faith and mystery and hope, why 
do your myriad virgins consent to a task 
that no human slave has ever accepted ? 
Another spring might be theirs, another 
summer, were they only a little less waste- 
ful of strength, a little Jess self-forgetful 
in their ardour for toil ; but at the mag- 
nificent moment when the flowers all cry 
to them, they seem to be stricken with 
the fatal ecstasy of work ; and in less 
than five weeks they almost all perish, 
their wings broken, their bodies shrivelled 
and covered with wounds. 

" Tantus amor florum, et generandi gloria mellis !' ' 

cries Virgil in the fourth book of the 
Georgics, wherein he devotes himself to 
the bees, and hands down to us the 
charming errors of the ancients, who 
looked on nature with eyes still dazzled 
by the presence of imaginary gods. 



6S 



The Swarm 

O] 

Why do they thus renounce sleep, the 
delights of honey and love, and the ex- 
quisite leisure enjoyed, for instance, by 
their winged brother, the butterfly ? 
Why will they not live as he lives ? 
It is not hunger that urges them on. 
Two or three flowers suffice for their 
nourishment, and in one hour they wili 
visit two or three hundred, to collect a 
treasure whose sweetness they never will 
taste. Why all this toil and distress, and 
whence comes this mighty assurance ? Is 
it so certain, then, that the new generation 
whereunto you offer your lives will merit 
the sacrifice ; will be more beautiful, hap- 
pier, will do something you have not 
done ? Your aim is clear to us, clearer 
far than our own ; you desire to live, 
as long as the world itself, in those that 
come after ; but what can the aim be 
69 



The Life of the Bee 

of this great aim ; what the mission of 
this existence eternally renewed ? 

And yet may it not be that these ques- 
tions are idle, and we who are putting them 
to you mere childish dreamers, hedged 
round with error and doubt? And, in- 
deed, had successive evolutions installed 
you all-powerful and supremely happy ; 
had you gained the last heights, whence 
at length you ruled over nature's laws ; 
nay, were you immortal goddesses, we 
still should be asking you what your 
desires might be, your ideas of prog- 
ress ; still wondering where you imag- 
ined that at last you would rest and 
declare your wishes fulfilled. We are 
so made that nothing contents us ; that 
we can regard no single thing as having 
its aim self-contained, as simply existing, 
with no thought beyond existence. Has 
there been, to this day, one god out of all 
the multitude man has conceived, from 
70 



The Swarm 

the vulgarest to the most thoughtful, of 
whom it has not been required that he 
shall be active and stirring, that he shall 
create countless beings and things, and 
have myriad aims outside himself? And 
will the time ever come when we shall be 
resigned for a few hours tranquilly to 
represent in this world an interesting 
form of material activity ; and then, our 
few hours over, to assume, without sur- 
prise and without regret, that other form 
which is the unconscious, the unknown, 
the slumbering, and the eternal ? 

[21] 

But we are forgetting the hive wherein 
the swarming bees have begun to lose 
patience, the hive whose black and vi- 
brating waves are bubbling and overflow- 
ing, like a brazen cup beneath an ardent 
sun. It is noon ; and the heat so great 
that the assembled trees would seem al- 



The Life of the Bee 

most to hold back their leaves, as a man 
holds his breath before something very 
tender but very grave. The bees give 
their honey and sweet-smelling wax to 
the man who attends them ; but more 
precious gift still is their summoning him 
to the gladness of June, to the joy of the 
beautiful months ; for events in which 
bees take part happen only when skies 
are pure, at the winsome hours of the 
year when flowers keep holiday. They 
are the soul of the summer, the clock 
whose dial records the moments of 
plenty ; they are the untiring wing on 
which delicate perfumes float ; the guide 
of the quivering light-ray, the song of the 
slumberous, languid air ; and their flight 
is the token, the sure and melodious note, 
of all the myriad fragile joys that are born 
in the heat and dwell in the sunshine. 
They teach us to tune our ear to the 
softest, most intimate whisper of these 
7* 



. 



The Swarm 

good, natural hours. To him who has 
known them and loved them, a summer 
where there are no bees becomes as sad 
and as empty as one without flowers or 
birds. 

O] 

The man who never before has beheld 
the swarm of a populous hive must re- 
gard this riotous, bewildering spectacle 
with some apprehension and diffidence. 
He will be almost afraid to draw near; 
he will wonder can these be the earnest, 
the peace-loving, hard-working bees whose 
movements he has hitherto followed ? 
It was but a few moments before he had 
seen them troop in from all parts of the 
country, as pre-occupied, seemingly, as 
little housewives might be, with no 
thoughts beyond household cares. He 
had watched them stream into the hive, 
imperceptibly almost, out of breath, 
73 



The Life of the Bee 

eager, exhausted, full of discreet agita- 
tion ; and had seen the young amazons 
stationed at the gate salute them, as they 
passed by, with the slightest wave of 
antennae. And then, the inner court 
reached, they had hurriedly given their 
harvest of honey to the adolescent por- 
tresses always stationed within, exchang- 
ing with these at most the three or 
four probably indispensable words ; or 
perhaps they would hasten themselves 
to the vast magazines that encircle the 
brood-cells, and deposit the two heavy 
baskets of pollen that depend from 
their thighs, thereupon at once going 
forth once more, without giving a thought 
to what might be passing in the royal 
palace, the work-rooms, or the dormitory 
where the nymphs lie asleep ; without 
for one instant joining in the babel of 
the public place in front of the gate, 
where it is the wont of the cleaners, at 
74 



The Swarm 
time of great heat, to congregate and to 
gossip. 

[ 23 ] 
To-day this is all changed. A certain 
number of workers, it is true, will peace- 
fully go to the fields, as though nothing 
were happening ; will come back, clean 
the hive, attend to the brood-cells, and 
hold altogether aloof from the general 
ecstasy. These are the ones that will 
not accompany the queen ; they will 
remain to guard the old home, feed the 
nine or ten thousand eggs, the eighteen 
thousand larvae, the thirty-six thousand 
nymphs and seven or eight royal prin- 
cesses, that to-day shall all be abandoned. 
Why they have been singled out for this 
austere duty, by what law, or by whom, 
it is not in our power to divine. To 
this mission of theirs they remain in- 
flexibly, tranquilly faithful ; and though 
75 



The Life of the Bee 

I have many times tried the experiment 
of sprinkling a colouring matter over one 
of these resigned Cinderellas, that are 
moreover easily to be distinguished in the 
midst of the rejoicing crowds by their 
serious and somewhat ponderous gait, 
it is rarely indeed that I have found 
one of them in the delirious throng 
of the swarm. 

cm 

And yet, the attraction must seem 
irresistible. It is the ecstasy of the per- 
haps unconscious sacrifice the god has 
ordained ; it is the festival of honey, the 
triumph of the race, the victory of the 
future : the one day of joy, of forgetfulness 
and folly ; the only Sunday known to 
the bees. It would appear to be also the 
solitary day upon which all eat their fill, 
and revel, to heart's content, in the de- 
lights of the treasure themselves have 
76 



The Swarm 

amassed. It is as though they were 
prisoners to whom freedom at last had 
been given, who had suddenly been led 
to a land of refreshment and plenty. 
They exult, they cannot contain the joy 
that is in them. They come and go 
aimlessly, — they whose every movement 
has always its precise and useful purpose 
— they depart and return, sally forth once 
again to see if the queen be ready, to 
excite their sisters, to beguile the tedium 
of waiting. They fly much higher than 
is their wont, and the leaves of the 
mighty trees round about all quiver 
responsive. They have left trouble 
behind, and care. They no longer are 
meddling and fierce, aggressive, suspicious, 
untamable, angry. Man — the unknown 
master whose sway they never acknowl- 
edge, who can subdue them only by con- 
forming to their every law, to their habits 
of labour, and following step by step the 
77 



The Life of the Bee 

path that is traced in their life by an 
intellect nothing can thwart or turn from 
its purpose, by a spirit whose aim is 
always the good of the morrow — on this 
day man can approach them, can divide 
the glittering curtain they form as they 
fly round and round in songful circles; 
he can take them up in his hand, and 
gather them as he would a bunch of 
grapes ; for to-day, in their gladness, 
possessing nothing, but full of faith in 
the future, they will submit to everything 
and injure no one, provided only they be 
not separated from the queen who bears 
that future within her. 

[25] 

But the veritable signal has not yet 
been given. In the hive there is in- 
describable confusion ; and a disorder 
whose meaning escapes us. At ordinary 
times each bee, once returned to her 
78 



The Swarm 

home, would appear to forget her posses- 
sion of wings ; and will pursue her active 
labours, making scarcely a movement, on 
that particular spot in the hive that her 
special duties assign. But to-day they all 
seem bewitched ; they fly in dense circles 
round and round the polished walls ; 
like a living jelly stirred by an invisible 
hand. The temperature within rises 
rapidly, — to such a degree, at times, thai 
the wax of the buildings will soften, and 
twist out of shape. The queen, who 
ordinarily never will stir from the centre 
of the comb, now rushes wildly, in breath- 
less excitement, over the surface of the 
vehement crowd that turn and turn on 
themselves. Is she hastening their de- 
parture, or trying to delay it ? Does she 
command, or haply implore ? Does this 
prodigious emotion issue from her, or is 
she its victim ? Such knowledge as we 
possess of the general psychology of the 
79 



The Life of the Bee 

bee warrants the belief that the swarming 
always takes place against the old sov- 
ereign's will. For indeed the ascetic 
workers, her daughters, regard the queen 
above all as the organ of love, indispen- 
sable, certainly, and sacred, but in herself 
somewhat unconscious, and often of feeble 
mind. They treat her like a mother in 
her dotage. Their respect for her, their 
tenderness, is heroic and boundless. 
The purest honey, specially distilled and 
almost entirely assimilable, is reserved 
for her use alone. She has an escort that 
watches over her by day and by night, 
that facilitates her maternal duties and 
gets ready the cells wherein the eggs 
shall be laid ; she has loving attendants 
who pet and caress her, feed her and clean 
her, and even absorb her excrement. 
Should the least accident befall her the 
news will spread quickly from group to 
group, and the whole population will rush 
80 



The Swarm 

to and fro in loud lamentation. Seize 
her, imprison her, take her away from 
the hive at a time when the bees shall 
have no hope of filling her place, owing, 
it may be, to her having left no pre- 
destined descendants, or to there being 
no larvae less than three days old (for a 
special nourishment is capable of trans- 
forming these into royal nymphs, such 
being the grand democratic principle of 
the hive, and a counterpoise to die preroga^ 
tives of maternal predestination), and then, 
her loss once known, after tw(? or three 
hours, perhaps, for the city is vast ; work 
will cease in almost every direction. The 
young will no longer be cared for ; part 
of the inhabitants will wander in every 
direction, seeking their mother, in quest 
of whom others will sally forth from the 
hive ; the workers engaged in construct- 
ing the comb will fall asunder and scatter, 
the foragers no longer will visit the 



The Life of the Bee 

flowers, the guard at the entrance will 
abandon their post; and foreign marau- 
ders, all the parasites of honey, forever 
on the watch for opportunities of plunder, 
will freely enter and leave without any 
one giving a thought to the defence of 
the treasure that has been so laboriously 
gathered. And poverty, little by little, 
will steal into the city ; the population 
will dwindle ; and the wretched inhabitants 
soon will perish of distress and despair, 
though every flower of summer burst 
into bloom before them. 

But let the queen be restored before 
her loss has become an accomplished, 
jrremediable fact, before the bees have 
grown too profoundly demoralised, — for 
in this they resemble men : a prolonged 
regret, or misfortune, will impair their 
intellect and degrade their character, — let 
her be restored but a few hours later, and 
they will receive her with extraordinary, 
82 



The Swarm 

pathetic welcome. They will flock eagerly 
round her ; excited groups will climb over 
each other in their anxiety to draw near; 
as she passes among them they will caress 
her with the long antennae that contain so 
many organs as yet unexplained ; they will 
present her with honey, and escort her 
tumultuously back to the royal chamber. 
And order at once is restored, work re- 
sumed, from the central comb of the 
brood-cells to the furthest annex where 
the surplus honey is stored ; the foragers 
go forth, in long black files, to return, in 
less than three minutes sometimes, laden 
with nectar and pollen ; streets are swept, 
parasites and marauders killed or expelled ; 
and the hive soon resounds with the gentle, 
monotonous cadence of the strange hymn 
of rejoicing, which is, it would seem, the 
hymn of the royal presence. 



8* 



The Life of the Bee 

i>6] 

There are numberless instances of the 
absolute attachment and devotion that 
the workers display towards their queen. 
Should disaster befall the little republic; 
should the hive or the comb collapse, 
should man prove ignorant, or brutal ; 
should they suffer from famine, from cold 
or disease, and perish by thousands, it 
will still be almost invariably found that 
the queen will be safe and alive, beneath 
the corpses of her faithful daughters. For 
they will protect her, help her to escape; 
their bodies will provide both rampart and 
shelter ; for her will be the last drop of 
honey, the wholesomest food. And be 
the disaster never so great, the city of 
virgins will not lose heart so long as the 
queen be alive. Break their comb twenty 
times in succession, take twenty times 
from them their young and their food, 



The Swarm 

you still shall never succeed in making 
them doubt of the future ; and though 
they be starving, and their number so 
small that it scarcely suffices to shield their 
mother from the enemy's gaze, they will 
set about to reorganize the laws of the 
colony, and to provide for what is most 
pressing ; they will distribute the work in 
accordance with the new necessities of this 
disastrous moment, and thereupon will 
immediately re-assume their labours with 
an ardour, a patience, a tenacity and intel- 
ligence not often to be found existing to 
such a degree in nature, true though it be 
that most of its creatures display more 
confidence and courage than man. 

But the presence of the queen is not 
even essential for their discouragement to 
vanish and their love to endure. It is 
enough that she should have left, at the 
moment of her death or departure, the 
very slenderest hope of descendants. " We 
85 






The Life of the Bee 

have seen a colony," says Langstroth, one 
of the fathers of modern apiculture, " that 
had not bees sufficient to cover a comb of 
three inches square, and yet endeavoured 
to rear a queen. For two whole weeks 
did they cherish this hope ; finally, when 
their number was reduced by one-half, their 
queen was born, but her wings were imper- 
fect, and she was unable to fly. Impotent 
as she was, her bees did not treat her with 
the less respect. A week more, and there 
remained hardly a dozen bees ; yet a few 
days, and the queen had vanished, leaving 
a few wretched, inconsolable insects upon 
the combs." 

[>7] 

There is another instance, and one that 
reveals most palpably the ultimate gesture 
of filial love and devotion. It arises from 
one of the extraordinary ordeals that our 
recent and tyrannical intervention inflicts 
86 



The Swarm 

on these hapless, unflinching heroines. I, 
in common with all amateur bee-keepers, 
have more than once had impregnated 
queens sent me from Italy ; for the 
Italian species is more prolific, stronger, 
more active, and gentler than our own. It 
is the custom to forward them in small, 
perforated boxes. In these some food is 
placed, and the queen enclosed, together 
with a certain number of workers, selected 
as far as possible from among the oldest 
bees in the hive. (The age of the bee can 
be readily told by its body, which gradu- 
ally becomes more polished, thinner, and 
almost bald ; and more particularly by 
the wings, which hard work uses and 
tears.) It is their mission to feed the 
queen during the journey, to tend her and 
guard her. I would frequently find, when 
the box arrived, that nearly every one of 
the workers was dead. On one occasion, 
indeed, they had all perished of hunger ; 

87 



The Life of the Bee 

but in this instance as in all others the 
queen was alive, unharmed, and full of 
vigour ; and the last of her companions 
had probably passed away in the act of 
presenting the last drop of honey she 
held in her sac to the queen, who was 
symbol of a life more precious, more vast 
than her own. 

[a8] 

This unwavering affection having come 
under the notice of man, he was able to 
turn to his own advantage the qualities to 
which it gives rise, or that it perhaps con- 
tains : the admirable political sense, the 
passion for work, the perseverance, mag- 
nanimity, and devotion to the future. 
It has allowed him, in the course of 
the last few years, to a certain extent 
to domesticate these intractable insects, 
though without their knowledge; for 
they yield to no foreign strength, and 
88 



The Swarm 

in their unconscious servitude obey only 
the laws of their own adoption. Man 
may believe, if he choose, that, possessing 
the queen, he holds in his hand the 
destiny and soul of the hive. In accord- 
ance with the manner in which he deals 
with her — as it were, plays with her — 
he can increase and hasten "the swarm or 
restrict and retard it ; he can unite or 
divide colonies, and direct the emigration 
of kingdoms. And yet it is none the less 
true that the queen is essentially merely a 
sort of living symbol, standing, as all 
symbols must, for a vaster although less 
perceptible principle ; and this principle 
the apiarist will do well to take into 
account, if he would not expose himself to 
more than one unexpected reverse. For 
the bees are by no means deluded. The 
presence of the queen does not blind them 
to the existence of their veritable sovereign, 
immaterial and everlasting, which is no 
89 



The Life of the Bee 

other than their fixed idea. Why inquire 
as to whether this idea be conscious or 
not ? Such speculation can have value 
only if our anxiety be to determine whether 
we should more rightly admire the bees 
that have the idea, or nature that has 
planted it in them. Wherever it lodge, 
in the vast unknowable body or in the 
tiny ones that we see, it merits our deepest 
attention ; nor may it be out of place here 
to observe that it is the habit we have of 
subordinating our wonder to accidents of 
origin or place, that so often causes us 
to lose the chance of deep admiration ; 
which of all things in the world is the 
most helpful to us. 

[ *> ] 

These conjectures may perhaps be re- 
garded as exceedingly venturesome, and 
possibly also as unduly human. It may 
be urged that the bees, in all probability, 
90 



The Swarm 

have no idea of the kind ; that their care 
for the future, love of the race, and many 
other feelings we choose to ascribe to 
them, are truly no more than forms as- 
sumed by the necessities of life, the fear 
of suffering or death, and the attraction of 
pleasure. Let it be so ; look on it all as 
a figure of speech ; it is a matter to which 
I attach no importance. The one thing 
certain here, as it is the one thing certain 
in all other cases, is that, under special 
circumstances, the bees will treat their 
queen in a special manner. The rest is 
all mystery, around which we only can 
weave more or less ingenious and pleasant 
conjecture. And yet, were we speaking 
of man in the manner wherein it were 
wise perhaps to speak of the bee, is there 
very much more we could say ? He too 
yields only to necessity, the attraction of 
pleasure, and the fear of suffering; and 
what we call our intellect has the same 
91 



The Life of the Bee 

origin and mission as what in animals we 
choose to term instinct. We do certain 
things, whose results we conceive to be 
known to us ; other things happen, and 
we flatter ourselves that we are better 
equipped than animals can be to divine 
their cause ; but, apart from the fact that 
this supposition rests on no very solid 
foundation, events of this nature are rare 
and infinitesimal, compared with the vast 
mass of others that elude comprehension ; 
and all, the pettiest and the most sublime, 
the best known and the most inexplicable, 
the nearest and the most distant, come to 
pass in a night so profound that our 
blindness may well be almost as great as 
that we suppose in the bee. 

[30] 

"All must agree," remarks BufFon, 
who has a somewhat amusing prejudice 
against the bee, — " all must agree that 
92 



The Swarm 

these flies, individually considered, pos- 
sess far less genius than the dog, the 
monkey, or the majority of animals ; that 
they display far less docility, attachment, 
or sentiment ; that they have, in a word, 
less qualities that relate to our own ; and 
from that we may conclude that their ap- 
parent intelligence derives only from their 
assembled multitude ; nor does this union 
even argue intelligence, for it is governed 
by no moral considerations, it being with- 
out their consent that they find themselves 
gathered together. This society, there- 
fore, is no more than a physical assem- 
blage ordained by nature, and independent 
either of knowledge, or reason, or aim. 
The mother-bee produces ten thousand 
individuals at a time, and in the same 
place ; these ten thousand individuals, 
were they a thousand times stupider than 
I suppose them to be, would be com- 
pelled, for the mere purpose of existence, 
93 



The Life of the Bee 

to contrive some form of arrangement; 
and, assuming that they had begun by in- 
juring each other, they would, as each 
one possesses the same strength as its 
fellow, soon have ended by doing each 
other the least possible harm, or, in other 
words, by rendering assistance. They 
have the appearance of understanding 
each other, and of working for a common 
aim ; and the observer, therefore, is apt to 
endow them with reasons and intellect 
that they truly are far from possessing. 
He will pretend to account for each 
action, show a reason behind every move- 
ment ; and from thence the gradation is 
easy to proclaiming them marvels, or 
monsters, of innumerable ideas. Where- 
as the truth is that these ten thousand 
individuals, that have been produced sim- 
ultaneously, that have lived together, and 
undergone metamorphosis at more or less 
the same time, cannot fail all to do the 
94 



The Swarm 

same thing, and are compelled, howeVev 
slight the sentiment within them, to adopt 
common habits, to live in accord and 
union, to busy themselves with their dwel- 
ling, to return to it after their journeys, 
etc., etc. And on this foundation arise 
the architecture, the geometry, the order, 
the foresight, love of country, — in a word, 
the republic ; all springing, as we have 
seen, from the admiration of the observer/' 
There we have our bees explained in a 
very different fashion. And if it seem 
more natural at first, is it not for the very 
simple reason that it really explains al- 
most nothing? I will not allude to the 
material errors this chapter contains ; I 
will only ask whether the mere fact of the 
bees accepting a common existence, while 
doing each other the least possible harm, 
does not in itself argue a certain intelli- 
gence. And does not this intelligence 
appear the more remarkable to us as we 
95 



The Life of the Bee 

more closely examine the fashion in which 
these "ten thousand individuals" avoid 
hurting each other, and end by giving as- 
sistance? And further, is this not the 
history of ourselves ; and does not all 
that the angry old naturalist says apply 
equally to every one of our human socie- 
ties? And yet once again: if the bee is 
indeed to be credited with none of the 
feelings or ideas that we have ascribed to 
it, shall we not very willingly shift the 
ground of our wonder ? If we must not 
admire the bee, we will then admire 
nature; the moment must always come 
when admiration can be no longer denied 
us, nor shall there be loss to us through 
our having retreated, or waited. 

£31] 

However these things may be, and with- 
out abandoning this conjecture of ours, that 
at least has the advantage of connecting 
96 



The Swarm 

in our mind certain actions that have evi- 
dent connection in fact, it is certain that 
the bees have far less adoration for the 
queen herself than for the infinite future 
of the race that she represents. They are 
not sentimental ; and should one of their 
number return from work so severely- 
wounded as to be held incapable of 
further service, they will ruthlessly expel 
her from the hive. And yet it cannot 
be said that they are altogether incapable 
of a kind of personal attachment towards 
their mother. They will recognise her 
from among all. Even when she is old, 
crippled, and wretched, the sentinels at 
the door will never allow another queen 
to enter the hive, though she be young 
and fruitful. It is true that this is one of 
the fundamental principles of their polity, 
and never relaxed except at times of 
abundant honey, in favour of some foreign 
worker who shall be well laden with food. 
7 97 



The Life of the Bee 

When the queen has become com 
pletely sterile, the bees will rear a certair 
number of royal princesses to fill her place. 
But what becomes of the old sovereign ? 
As to this we have no precise knowledge ; 
but it has happened, at times, that apia^ 
rists have found a magnificent queen, in 
the flower of her age, on the central comb 
of the hive ; and in some obscure corner, 
right at the back, the gaunt, decrepit " old 
mistress," as they call her in Normandy. 
In such cases it would seem that the bees 
have to exercise the greatest care to pro- 
tect her from the hatred of the vigorous 
rival who longs for her death; for queen 
hates queen so fiercely that two who might 
happen to be under the same roof would 
immediately fly at each other. It would be 
pleasant to believe that the bees are thus 
providing their ancient sovereign with a 
humble shelter in a remote corner of the 
city, where she may end her days in peace. 
98 






The Swarm 

Here again we touch one of the thousand 
enigmas of the waxen city ; and it is once 
more proved to us that the habits and 
the policy of the bees are by no means 
narrow, or rigidly predetermined ; and 
that their actions have motives far more 
complex than we are inclined to suppose. 

[32] 

But we are constantly tampering with 
what they must regard as immovable 
laws of nature ; constantly placing the 
bees in a position that may be compared 
to that in which we should ourselves be 
placed were the laws of space and gravity, 
of light and heat, to be suddenly sup- 
pressed around us. What are the bees to 
do when we, by force or by fraud, intro- 
duce a second queen into the city ? It is 
probable that, in a state of nature, thanks 
to the sentinels at the gate, such an event 
has never occurred since they first came 
90 



The Life of the Bee 

into the world. But this prodigious con- 
juncture does not scatter their wits ; they 
still contrive to reconcile the two princi- 
ples that they appear to regard in the light 
of divine commands. The first is that of 
unique maternity, never infringed except 
in the case of sterility in the reigning 
queen, and even then only very excep- 
tionally ,• the second is more curious still, 
and, although never transgressed, suscepti- 
ble of what may almost be termed a Judaic 
evasion. It is the law that invests the 
person of a queen, whoever she be, with a 
sort of inviolability. It would be a simple 
matter for the bees to pierce the intruder 
with their myriad envenomed stings ; she 
would die on the spot, and they would 
merely have to remove the corpse from 
the hive. But though this sting is always 
held ready to strike, though they make 
constant use of it in their fights among 
themselves, they will never draw it against 
ioo 



The Swarm 

a queen; nor will a queen ever draw hers 
on a man, an animal, or an ordinary bee. 
She will never unsheath her royal weapon 
— curved, in scimeter fashion, instead of 
being straight, like that of the ordinary 
bee — save only in the case of her doing 
battle with an equal : in other words, 
with a sister queen. 

No bee, it would seem, dare take on 
herself the horror of direct and bloody 
regicide. Whenever, therefore, the good 
order and prosperity of the republic 
appear to demand that a queen shall die, 
they endeavour to give to her death some 
semblance of natural decease, and by infi- 
nite subdivision of the crime, to render it 
almost anonymous. 

They will, therefore, to use the pictur- 
esque expression of the apiarist, " ball " 
the queenly intruder ; in other words, they 
will entirely surround her with their innu- 
merable interlaced bodies. They will 

IOI 



The Life of the Bee 

thus form a sort of living prison wherein 
the captive is unable to move ; and in 
this prison they will keep her for twenty- 
four hours, if need be, till the victim die 
of suffocation or hunger. 

But if, at this moment, the legitimate 
queen draw near, and, scenting a rival, 
appear disposed to attack her, the living 
walls of the prison will at once fly open ; 
and the bees, forming a circle around the 
two enemies, will eagerly watch the strange 
duel that will ensue, though remaining 
strictly impartial, and taking no share in 
it. For it is written that against a mother 
the sting may be drawn by a mother 
alone ; only she who bears in her flanks 
close on two million lives appears to 
possess the right with one blow to inflict 
close on two million deaths. 

But if the combat last too long, without 
any result, if the circular weapons glide 
harmlessly over the heavy cuirasses, if one 



102 



The Swarm 

of the queens appear anxious to make her 
escape, then, be she the legitimate sover- 
eign or be she the stranger, she will at 
once be seized and lodged in the living 
prison until such time as she manifest 
once more the desire to attack her foe. It 
is right to add, however, that the numer- 
ous experiments that have been made on 
this subject have almost invariably resulted 
in the victory of the reigning queen, owing 
perhaps to the extra courage and ardour 
she derives from the knowledge that she 
is at home, with her subjects around her, 
or to the fact that the bees, however im- 
partial while the fight is in progress, may 
possibly display some favouritism in their 
manner of imprisoning the rivals ; for 
their mother would seem scarcely to suffer 
from the confinement, whereas the stranger 
almost always emerges in an appreciably 
bruised and enfeebled condition. 



k>3 



The Life of the Bee 

133] 

There is one simple experiment which 
proves the readiness with which the bees 
will recognise their queen, and the depth 
of the attachment they bear her. Re- 
move her from the hive, and there will 
soon be manifest all the phenomena of 
anguish and distress that I have described 
in a preceding chapter. Replace her, a 
few hours later, and all her daughters will 
hasten towards her, offering honey. One 
section will form a lane, for her to pass 
through ; others, with head bent low and 
abdomen high in the air, will describe 
before her great semicircles throbbing with 
sound ; hymning, doubtless, the chant of 
welcome their rites dictate for moments 
of supreme happiness or solemn respect. 

But let it not be imagined that a foreign 
queen may with impunity be substituted 
for the legitimate mother. The bees will 
104 



The Swarm 

at once detect the imposture ; the intru- 
der will be seized, and immediately en- 
closed in the terrible, tumultuous prison, 
whose obstinate walls will be relieved, as 
it were, till she dies ; for in this particular 
instance it hardly ever occurs that the 
stranger emerges alive. 

And here it is curious to note to 
what diplomacy and elaborate stratagem 
man is compelled to resort in order to 
delude these little sagacious insects, and 
bend them to his will. In their un- 
swerving loyalty, they will accept the 
most unexpected events with touching 
courage, regarding them probably as some 
new and inevitable fatal caprice of nature. 
And, indeed, all this diplomacy notwith- 
standing, in the desperate confusion that 
may follow one of these hazardous ex- 
pedients, it is on the admirable good 
sense of the bee that man always, and 
almost empirically, relies : on the inex- 
™5 



The Life of the Bee 

haustible treasure of their marvellous laws 
and customs, on their love of peace and 
order, their devotion to the public weal, 
and fidelity to the future ; on the adroit 
strength, the earnest disinterestedness, of 
their character, and, above all, on the un- 
tiring devotion with which they fulfil 
their duty. But the enumeration of such 
procedures belongs rather to technical 
treatises on apiculture, and would take us 
too far. 1 

1 The stranger queen is usually brought into the 
hive enclosed in a little cage, with iron wires, which 
is hung between two combs. The cage has a door 
made of wax and honey, which the workers, their 
anger over, proceed to gnaw, thus freeing the prisoner, 
whom they will often receive without any ill-will. 
Mr. Simmins, manager of the great apiary at Rotting- 
dean, has recently discovered another method of intro- 
ducing a queen, which, being extremely simple and 
almost invariably successful, bids fair to be generally 
adopted by apiarists who value their art. It is the 
behaviour of the queen that usually makes her intro- 
duction a matter of so great difficulty. She is almost 
1 06 



The Swarm 

[34] 

As regards this personal affection of 
which we have spoken, there is one word 
more to be said. That such affection 

distracted, flies to and fro, hides, and generally com- 
ports herself as an intruder, thus arousing the suspicions 
of the bees, which are soon confirmed by the workers' 
examination. Mr. Simmins at first completely isolates 
the queen he intends to introduce, and lets her fast for 
half an hour. He then lifts a corner of the inner 
cover of the orphaned hive, and places the strange queen 
on the top of one of the combs. Her former isolation 
having terrified her, she is delighted to find herself in 
the midst of the bees ; and being famished she eagerly 
accepts the food they offer her. The workers, de- 
ceived by her assurance, do not examine her, but prob- 
ably imagine that their old queen has returned, and 
welcome her joyfully. It would seem, therefore, that, 
contrary to the opinion of Huber and all other inves- 
tigators, the bees are not capable of recognising their 
queen. In any event, the two explanations, which are 
both equally plausible — though the truth may lurk, 
perhaps, in a third, that is not yet known to us — 
only prove once again how complex and obscure is 
the psychology of the bee. And from this, as from all 
107 



The Life of the Bee 

exists is certain, but it is certain also that 
its memory is exceedingly short-lived. 
Dare to replace in her kingdom a mother 
whose exile has lasted some days, and her 
indignant daughters will receive her in 
such a fashion as to compel you hastily to 
snatch her from the deadly imprisonment 
reserved for unknown queens. For the 
bees have had time to transform a dozen 
workers' habitations into royal cells, and 
the future of the race is no longer in 
danger. Their affection will increase, or 
dwindle, in the degree that the queen rep- 
resents the future. Thus we often find, 
when a virgin queen is performing the 
perilous ceremony known as the " nuptial 
flight,' ' of which I will speak later, that 
her subjects are so fearful of losing her 
that they will all accompany her on this 

questions that deal with life, we can draw one conclu- 
sion only: that, till better obtain, curiosity still must 
rule in our heart. 

ioS 



The Swarm 

tragic and distant quest of love. Thk 
they will never do, however, if they be 
provided with a fragment of comb con- 
taining brood-cells, whence they shall be 
able to rear other queens. Indeed, their 
affection even may turn into fury and 
hatred should their sovereign fail in her 
duty to that sort of abstract divinity that 
we should call future society, which the 
bees would appear to regard far more 
seriously than we. It happens, for in- 
stance, at times, that apiarists for various 
reasons will prevent the queen from join- 
ing a swarm by inserting a trellis into the 
hive ; the nimble and slender workers will 
flit through it, unperceiving, but to the 
poor slave of love, heavier and more cor- 
pulent than her daughters, it offers an im- 
passable barrier. The bees, when they 
find that the queen has not followed, will 
return to the hive, and scold the unfortu- 
nate prisoner, hustle and ill-treat her, 
iog 



The Life of the Bee 

accusing her of laziness, probably, or sus- 
pecting her of feeble mind. On their 
second departure, when they find that she 
still has not followed, her ill-faith becomes 
evident to them, and their attacks grow 
more serious. And finally, when they 
shall have gone forth once more, and still 
with the same result, they will almost 
always condemn her, as being irremediably 
faithless to her destiny and to the future 
of the race, and put her to death in the 
royal prison. 

[35] 
It is to the future, therefore, that the 
bees subordinate all things ; and with 
a foresight, a harmonious co-operation, a 
skill in interpreting events and turning 
them to the best advantage, that must 
compel our heartiest admiration, particu- 
larly when we remember in how startling 
and supernatural a light our recent inter- 
no 



The Swarm 

mention must present itself to them. It 
may be said, perhaps, that in the last 
instance we have given, they place a very 
false construction upon the queen's ina- 
bility to follow them. But would our 
powers of discernment be so very much 
subtler, if an intelligence of an order 
entirely different from our own, and 
served by a body so colossal that its 
movements were almost as imperceptible 
as those of a natural phenomenon, were 
to divert itself by laying traps of this 
kind for us? Has it not taken us thou- 
sands of years to invent a sufficiently 
plausible explanation for the thunderbolt ? 
There is a certain feebleness that over- 
whelms every intellect the moment it 
emerges from its own sphere, and is 
brought face to face with events not of 
its own initiation. And, besides, it is 
quite possible that if this ordeal of the 
trellis were to obtain more regularly and 
in 



The Life of the Bee 

generally among the bees, they would end 
by detecting the pitfall, and by taking 
steps to elude it. They have mastered 
the intricacies of the movable comb, of 
the sections that compel them to store 
their surplus honey in little boxes sym- 
metrically piled ; and in the case of the 
still more extraordinary innovation of 
foundation wax, where the cells are indi- 
cated only by a slender circumference 
of wax, they are able at once to grasp 
the advantages this new system presents ; 
they most carefully extend the wax, and 
thus, without loss of time or labour, 
construct perfect cells. So long as the 
event that confronts them appear not 
a snare devised by some cunning and 
malicious god, the bees may be trusted 
always to discover the best, nay, the only 
human, solution. Let me cite an in- 
stance ; an event, that, though occurring 
in nature, is still in itself wholly abnor- 

1X2 



The Swarm 

mal. 1 refer to the manner in which 
the bees will dispose of a mouse or a 
slug that may happen to have found its 
way into the hive. The intruder killed, 
they have to deal with the body, which 
will very soon poison their dwelling. 
If it be impossible for them to expel or 
dismember it, they will proceed methodi- 
cally and hermetically to enclose it in a 
veritable sepulchre of propolis and wax, 
which will tower fantastically above the 
ordinary monuments of the city. In one 
of my hives last year I discovered three 
such tombs side by side, erected with 
party-walls, like the cells of the comb, 
so that no wax should be wasted. These 
tombs the prudent grave-diggers had 
raised over the remains of three snails 
that a child had introduced into the hive. 
As a rule, when dealing with snails, they 
will be content to seal up with wax the 
orifice of the shell. But in this case 
.8 113 



The Life of the Bee 

the shells were more or less cracked 
and broken ; and they had considered it 
simpler, therefore, to bury the entire snail ; 
and had further contrived, in order that 
circulation in the entrance-hall might not 
be impeded, a number of galleries exactly 
proportionate, not to their own girth, 
but to that of the males, which are 
almost twice as large as themselves. 
Does not this instance, and the one that 
follows, warrant our believing that they 
would in time discover the cause of the 
queen's inability to follow them through 
the trellis ? They have a very nice sense 
of proportion, and of the space required 
for the movement of bodies. In the 
regions where the hideous death's-head 
sphinx, the acherontia atropos, abounds, 
they construct little pillars of wax at the 
entrance of the hive, so restricting the di- 
mension as to prevent the passage of the 
nocturnal marauder's enormous abdomen. 
114 



The Swarm 

[36] - * j 

But enough on this point; were I to 
cite every instance I should never have 
done. To return to the queen, whose 
position in the hive, and the part that 
she plays therein, we shall most fitly 
describe by declaring her to be the cap- 
tive heart of the city, and the centre 
around which its intelligence revolves. 
Unique sovereign though she be, she 
is also the royal servant, the responsible 
delegate of love, and its captive custo- 
dian. Her people serve her and vener- 
ate her; but they never forget that it 
is not to her person that their homage 
is given, but to the mission that she ful- 
fils, and the destiny she represents. It 
would not be easy for us to find a human 
republic whose scheme comprised more 
of the desires of our planet ; or a democ- 
racy that offered an independence more 
"5 



The Life of the Bee 

perfect and rational, combined with a sub- 
mission more logical and more complete. 
And nowhere, surely, should we discover 
more painful and absolute sacrifice. Let 
it not be imagined that I admire this 
sacrifice to the extent that I admire its 
results. It were evidently to be desired 
that these results might be obtained at 
the cost of less renouncement and suf- 
fering. But, the principle once accepted, 
— and this is needful, perhaps, in the 
scheme of our globe, — its organisation 
compels our wonder. Whatever the 
human truth on this point may be, life, 
in the hive, is not looked on as a 
series of more or less pleasant hours, 
whereof it is wise that those moments 
only should be soured and embittered 
that are essential for maintaining exist- 
ence. The bees regard it as a great 
common duty, impartially distributed 
amongst them all, and tending towards 
116 



The Swarm 

a future that goes further and further 
back ever since the world began. And, 
for the sake of this future, each one 
renounces more than half of her rights 
and her joys. The queen bids farewell 
to freedom, the light of day, and the 
calyx of flowers ; the workers give five 
or six years of their life, and shall never 
know love, or the joys of maternity. 
The queen's brain turns to pulp, that the 
reproductive organs may profit ; in the 
workers these organs atrophy, to the bene- 
fit of their intelligence. Nor would it 
be fair to allege that the will plays no 
part in all these renouncements. We 
have seen that each worker's larva can 
be transformed into a queen if lodged 
and fed on the royal plan; and similarly 
could each royal larva be turned into 
worker if her food were changed and 
her cell reduced. These mysterious elec- 
tions take place every day in the golden 
TT 7 



The Life of the Bee 

shade of the hive. It is not chance that 
controls them, but a wisdom whose deep 
loyalty, gravity, and unsleeping watch- 
fulness man alone can betray : a wisdom 
that makes and unmakes, and keeps careful 
watch over all that happens within and 
without the city. * If sudden flowers 
abound, or the queen grow old, or less 
fruitful ; if population increase, and be 
pressed for room, you then shall find 
that the bees will proceed to rear royal 
cells. But these cells may be destroyed 
if the harvest fail, or the hive be en- 
larged. Often they will be retained so 
long as the young queen have not ac- 
complished, or succeeded in, her marriage 
flight, — to be at once annihilated when 
she returns, trailing behind her, trophy- 
wise, the infallible sign of her impregna- 
tion. Who shall say where the wisdom 
resides that can thus balance present and 
future, and prefer what is not yet visible 
118 



The Swarm 

to that which already is seen ? Where 
the anonymous prudence that selects and 
abandons, raises and lowers ; that of so 
many workers makes so many queens, 
and of so many mothers can make a 
people of virgins ? We have said else- 
where that it lodged in the " Spirit of 
the Hive," but where shall this spirit 
of the hive be looked for if not in the 
assembly of workers ? To be convinced 
of its residence there, we need not per- 
haps have studied so closely the habits 
of this royal republic. It was enough 
to place under the microscope, as Dujar- 
din, Brandt, Girard, Vogel, and other 
entomologists have done, the little un- 
couth and careworn head of the virgin 
worker side by side with the somewhat 
empty skull of the queen and the male's 
magnificent cranium, glistening with its 
twenty-six thousand eyes. Within this 
tiny head we should find the workings 
119 



The Life of the Bee 

of the vastest and most magnificent brain 
of the hive : the most beautiful and com- 
plex, the most perfect, that, in another 
order and with a different organisation, is 
to be found in nature after that of man. 
Here again, as in every quarter where 
the scheme of the world is known to us, 
there where the brain is, are authority 
and victory, veritable strength and wis- 
dom. And here again it is an almost 
invisible atom of this mysterious sub- 
stance that organises and subjugates 
matter, and is able to create its own 
little triumphant and permanent place in 
the midst of the stupendous, inert forces 
of nothingness and death. 1 

1 The brain of the bee, according to the calcula- 
tion of Dujardin, constitutes the I-I74th part of the 
insect's weight, and that of the ant the i-296th. 
On the other hand the peduncular parts, whose de- 
velopment usually keeps pace with the triumphs the 
intellect achieves over instinct, are somewhat less 
important in the t>ee than in the ant. It would seem 

120 



The Swarm 

[37] 

And now to return to our swarming 
hive, where the bees have already given 
the signal for departure, without waiting 
for these reflections of ours to come to an 
end. At the moment this signal is given, 
it is as though one sudden mad impulse 
had simultaneously flung open wide every 
single gate in the city ; and the black 
throng issues, or rather pours forth in 
a double, or treble, or quadruple jet, as 
the number of exits may be ; in a tense, 
direct, vibrating, uninterrupted stream 
that at once dissolves and melts into 
space, where the myriad transparent, furi- 
ous wings weave a tissue throbbing with 
sound. And this for some moments will 

to result from these estimates — which are of course 
hypothetical, and deal with a matter that is exceed- 
ingly obscure — that the intellectual value of the bee 
and the ant must be more or less equal. 
121 



The Life of the Bee 

quiver right over the hive, with prodigious 
rustle of gossamer silks that countless 
electrified hands might be ceaselessly rend- 
ing and stitching ; it floats undulating, it 
trembles and flutters like a veil of glad- 
ness invisible fingers support in the sky, 
and wave to and fro, from the flowers to 
the blue, expecting sublime advent or de- 
parture. And at last one angle declines 
another is lifted ; the radiant mantle 
unites its four sunlit corners ; and like 
the wonderful carpet the fairy-tale speaks 
of, that flits across space to obey its mas- 
ter's command, it steers its straight course, 
bending forward a little as though to hide 
in its folds the sacred presence of the 
future, towards the willow, the pear-tree, 
or lime whereon the queen has alighted ; 
and round her each rhythmical wave 
comes to rest, as though on a nail of gold, 
and suspends its fabric of pearls and of 
luminous wings. 

122 



The Swarm 

And then there is silence once more ; 
and, in an instant, this mighty tumult, 
this awful curtain apparently laden with 
unspeakable menace and anger, this be- 
wildering golden hail that streamed upon 
every object near — all these become merely 
a great, inoffensive, peaceful cluster of bees, 
composed of thousands of little motionless 
groups, that patiently wait, as they hang 
from the branch of a tree, for the scouts 
to return who have gone in search of a 
place of shelter. 

[38] 

This is the first stage of what is known 
as the "primary swarm" at whose head 
the old queen is always to be found. 
They will settle as a rule on the shrub 
or the tree that ,r s nearest the hive ; for 
the queen, besides being weighed down 
by her eggs, has dwelt in constant dark- 
ness ever since her marriage-flight, or the 
123 



The Life of the Bee 

swarm of the previous year ; and is natu- 
rally reluctant to venture far into space, 
having indeed almost forgotten the use 
of her wings. 

The bee-keeper waits till the mass be 
completely gathered together ; then, hav- 
ing covered his head with a large straw 
hat (for the most inoffensive bee will con- 
ceive itself caught in a trap if entangled 
in hair, and will infallibly use its sting), 
but, if he be experienced, wearing neither 
mask nor veil ; having taken the precau- 
tion only of plunging his arms in cold 
water up to the elbow, he proceeds to 
gather the swarm by vigorously shaking 
the bough from which the bees depend 
over an inverted hive. Into this hive the 
cluster will fall as heavily as an over-ripe 
fruit. Or, if the branch be too stout, he 
can plunge a spoon into the mass ; and 
deposit where he will the living spoonfuls, 
as though he were ladling out corn. He 
124 



The Swarm 

need have no fear of the bees that are 
buzzing around him, settling on his face 
and hands. The air resounds with their 
song of ecstasy, which is different far from 
their chant of anger. He need have no 
fear that the swarm will divide, or grow 
fierce, will scatter, or try to escape. This 
is a day, I repeat, when a spirit of holi- 
day would seem to animate these mys- 
terious workers, a spirit of confidence, 
that apparently nothing can trouble. 
They have detached themselves from 
the wealth they had to defend, and they 
no longer recognise their enemies. They 
become inoffensive because of their hap- 
piness, though why they are happy we 
know not, except it be because they are 
obeying their law. A moment of such 
blind happiness is accorded by nature at 
times to every living thing, when she 
seeks to accomplish her end. Nor need 
we feel any surprise that here the bees are 
"5 



The Life of the Bee 

her dupes ; we ourselves, who have studied 
her movements these centuries past, and 
with a brain more perfect than that of the 
bee, we too are her dupes, and know not 
even yet whether she be benevolent or 
indifferent, or only basely cruel. 

There where the queen has alighted the 
swarm will remain ; and had she descended 
alone into the hive, the bees would have 
followed, in long black files, as soon as 
intelligence had reached them of the ma- 
ternal retreat. The majority will hasten 
to her, with utmost eagerness ; but large 
numbers will pause for an instant on the 
threshold of the unknown abode, and 
there will describe the circles of solemn 
rejoicing with which it is their habit to 
celebrate happy events. " They are beat- 
ing to arms," say the French peasants. 
And then the strange home will at once 
be accepted, and its remotest corners 
explored ; its position in the apiary, its 
126 



The Swarm 

form, its colour, are grasped and retained 
in these thousands of prudent and faithful 
little memories. Careful note is taken of 
the neighbouring landmarks, the new city- 
is founded, and its place established in the 
mind and the heart of all its inhabitants ; 
the walls resound with the love-hymn of 
the royal presence, and work begins. 

But if the swarm be not gathered by 
man, its history will not end here. It 
will remain suspended on the branch un- 
til the return of the workers, who, acting 
as scouts, winged quartermasters, as it 
were, have at the very first moment of 
swarming sallied forth in all directions in 
search of a lodging. They return one by 
one, and render account of their mission ; 
and as it is manifestly impossible for us to 
fathom the thought of the bees, we can 
only interpret in human fashion the spec- 
127 



The Life of the Bee 

tacle that they present. We may regard 
it as probable, therefore, that most careful 
attention is given to the reports of the 
various scouts. One of them it may be, 
dwells on the advantage of some hollow 
tree it has seen ; another is in favour of a 
crevice in a ruinous wall, of a cavity in a 
grotto, or an abandoned burrow. The 
assembly often will pause and deliberate 
until the following morning. Then at 
last the choice is made, and approved by 
all. At a given moment the entire mass 
stirs, disunites, sets in motion, and then, 
in one sustained and impetuous flight, 
that this time knows no obstacle, it will 
steer its straight course, over hedges and 
cornfields, over haystack and lake, over 
river and village, to its determined and 
always distant goal. It is rarely indeed 
that this second stage can be followed by 
man. The swarm returns to nature ; and 
we lose the track of its destiny 
128 



Ill 

THE FOUNDATION OF THE 
CITY 



129 



Ill 

THE FOUNDATION OF THE 
CITY 

[4o] 

LET us rather consider the proceedings 
of the swarm the apiarist shall have 
gathered into his hive. And first of all 
let us not be forgetful of the sacrifice these 
fifty thousand virgins have made, who, as 
Ronsard sings, — 

" In a little body bear so true a heart, — ■■" 

and let us, yet once again, admire the 
courage with which they begin life anew 
in the desert whereon they have fallen. 
They have forgotten the splendour and 
wealth of their native city, where existence 
had been so admirably organised and 
131 



The Life of the Bee 

certain, where the essence of every flower 
reminiscent of sunshine had enabled them 
to smile at the menace of winter. There, 
asleep in the depths of their cradles, they 
hare left thousands and thousands of 
daughters, whom they never again will 
see. They have abandoned, not only the 
enormous treasure of pollen and propolis 
they had gathered together, but also more 
than 1 20 pounds of honey; a quantity" 
representing more than twelve times the 
entire weight of the population, and close 
on 600,000 times that of the individual 
bee. To man this would mean 42,000 
tons of provisions, a vast fleet of mighty 
ships laden with nourishment more pre- 
cious than any known to us ; for to the 
bee honey is a kind of liquid life, a species 
of chyle that is at once assimilated, with 
almost no waste whatever. 

Here, in the new abode, there is noth- 
ing ; not a drop of honey, not a morsel of 
132 



The Foundation of the City 

wax; neither guiding-mark nor point of 
support. There is only the dreary emp- 
tiness of an enormous monument that has 
nothing but sides and roof. Within the 
smooth and rounded walls there only is 
darkness ; and the enormous arch above 
rears itself over nothingness. But useless 
regrets are unknown to the bee ; or in any 
event it does not allow them to hinder its 
action. Far from being cast down by an 
ordeal before which every other courage 
would succumb, it displays greater ardour 
than ever. Scarcely has the hive been 
set in its place, or the disorder allayed that 
ensued on the bees' tumultuous fall, when 
we behold the clearest, most unexpected 
division in that entangled mass. The 
greater portion, forming in solid columns, 
like an army obeying a definite order, will 
proceed to climb the vertical walls of the 
hive. The cupola reached, the first to 
arrive will cling with the claws of their 
'3? 



The Life of the Bee 

anterior legs, those that follow hang on to 
the first, and so in succession, until long 
chains have been formed that serve as a 
bridge to the crowd that rises and rises. 
And, by slow degrees, these chains, as 
their number increases, supporting each 
other and incessantly interweaving, be- 
come garlands which, in their turn, the 
uninterrupted and constant ascension 
transforms into a thick, triangular curtain, 
or rather a kind of compact and inverted 
cone, whose apex attains the summit of 
the cupola, while its widening base de- 
scends to a half, or two-thirds, of the 
entire height of the hive. And then, the 
last bee that an inward voice has impelled 
to form part of this group having added 
itself to the curtain suspended in darkness, 
the ascension ceases ; all movement slowly 
dies away in the dome ; and, for long 
hours, this strange inverted cone will wait, 
in a silence that almost seems awful, in a 
i34 



The Foundation of the City 

stillness one might regard as religious, for 
the mystery of wax to appear. 

In the meantime the rest of the bees — 
those, that is, that remained down below 
in the hive — have shown not the slightest 
desire to join the others aloft, and pay no 
heed to the formation of the marvellous 
curtain on whose folds a magical gift is 
soon to descend. They are satisfied to 
examine the edifice and undertake the 
necessary labours. They carefully sweep 
the floor, and remove, one by one, twigs, 
grains of sand, and dead leaves ; for the 
bees are almost fanatically cleanly, and 
when, in the depths of winter, severe 
frosts retard too long what apiarists term 
their "flight of cleanliness," rather than 
sully the hive they will perish by thou- 
sands of a terrible bowel-disease. The 
males alone are incurably careless, and will 
impudently bestrew the surface of the comb 
with their droppings, which the workers 
i3S 



The Life of the Bee 

are obliged to sweep as they hasten behind 
them. 

The cleaning over, the bees of the pro- 
fane group that form no part of the cone 
suspended in a sort of ecstasy, set to work 
minutely to survey the lower circumference 
of the common dwelling. Every crevice 
is passed in review, and filled, covered 
over with propolis ; and the varnishing of 
the walls is begun, from top to bottom. 
Guards are appointed to take their stand 
at the gate; and very soon a certain 
number of workers will go to the fields 
and return with their burden of pollen. 

[41] 
Before raising the folds of the mysteri- 
ous curtain beneath whose shelter are laid 
the veritable foundations of the home, let 
us endeavour to form some conception of 
the sureness of vision, the accurate cal- 
culation and industry our little people 
136 



The Foundation of the City 

of emigrants will be called to display 
in order to adapt this new dwelling to 
their requirements. In the void round 
about them they must lay the plans for 
their city, and logically mark out the site 
of the edifices that must be erected as 
economically and quickly as possible, for 
the queen, eager to lay, already is scat- 
tering her eggs on the ground. And in 
this labyrinth of complicated buildings, 
so far existing only in imagination, laws 
of ventilation must be considered, of 
stability, solidity ; resistance of the wax 
must not be lost sight of, or the nature 
of the food to be stored, or the habits 
of the queen ; ready access must be con- 
trived to all parts, and careful attention 
be given to the distribution of stores and 
houses, passages and streets, — this how- 
ever is in some measure pre-established, 
the plan already arrived at being organi- 
cally the best, — and there are countless 
i37 



The Life of the Bee 

problems besides, whose enumeration 
would take too long. 

Now, the form of the hive that man 
offers to the bee knows infinite variety, 
from the hollow tree or earthenware vessel 
still obtaining in Asia and Africa, and the 
familiar bell-shaped constructions of straw 
which we find in our farmers' kitchen- 
gardens or beneath their windows, lost 
beneath masses of sunflowers, phlox, and 
hollyhock, to what may really be termed 
the factory of the model apiarist of to- 
day. An edifice, this, that can contain 
more than three hundred pounds of 
honey, in three or four stories of super- 
posed combs enclosed in a frame which 
permits of their being removed and 
handled, of the harvest being extracted 
*hrough centrifugal force by means of 
a turbine, and of their being then re- 
stored to their place like a book in a 
well-ordered library. 
*3* 



The Foundation of the City 

And one fine day the industry or 
caprice of man will install a docile swarm 
in one of these disconcerting abodes. And 
there the little insect is expected to learn 
its bearings, to find its way, to establish 
its home ; to modify the seemingly un- 
changeable plans dictated by the nature 
of things. In this unfamiliar place it 
is required to determine the site of the 
winter storehouses, that must not extend 
beyond the zone of heat that issues from 
the half-numbed inhabitants ; it must 
divine the exact point where the brood- 
cells shall concentrate, under penalty of 
disaster should these be too high or too 
low, too near to or far from the door. 
The swarm, it may be, has just left 
the trunk of a fallen tree, containing 
one long, narrow, depressed, horizon- 
tal gallery ; and it finds itself now 
in a tower-shaped edifice, whose roof is 
lost in gloom. Or, to take a case that 
i39 



The Life of the Bee 

is more usual, perhaps, and one that 
will give some idea of the surprise habit- 
ually in store for the bees : after having 
lived for centuries past beneath the 
straw dome of our village hives, they 
are suddenly transplanted to a species 
of mighty cupboard, or chest, three or 
four times as large as the place of their 
birth ; and installed in the midst of a con- 
fused scaffolding of superposed frames, 
some running parallel to the entrance and 
some perpendicular ; the whole forming 
a bewildering network that obscures the 
surfaces of their dwelling. 

!>] 

And yet, for all this, there exists not 
a single instance of a swarm refusing its 
duty, or allowing itself to be baffled or 
discouraged by the strangeness of its sur- 
roundings, except only in the case of the 
new dwelling being absolutely uninhahi- 
140 



The Foundation of the City 

table, or impregnated with evil odours. 
And even then the bees will not be dis- 
heartened or bewildered ; even then they 
will not abandon their mission. The 
swarm will simply forsake the inhospi- 
table abode, to seek better fortune some 
little distance away. And similarly it can 
never be said of them that they can be 
induced to undertake any illogical or 
foolish task. Their common-sense has 
never been known to fail them ; they 
have never, at a loss for definite decision, 
erected at haphazard structures of a wild or 
heterogeneous nature. Though you place 
the swarm in a sphere, a cube, or a pyra- 
mid, in an oval or polygonal basket, you 
will find, on visiting the bees a few days 
later, that if this strange assembly of little 
independent intellects has accepted the new 
abode, they will at once, and unhesitatingly 
and unanimously have known how to select 
the most favourable, often humanly speak? 
141 



The Life of the Bee 

ing the only possible spot in this absurd 
habitation, in pursuance of a method 
whose principles may appear inflexible, 
but whose results are strikingly vivid. 

When installed in one of the huge fac- 
tories, bristling with frames, that we men- 
tioned just now, these frames will interest 
them only to the extent in which they 
provide them with a basis or point of 
departure for their combs ; and they 
very naturally pay not the slightest heed 
to the desires or intentions of man. But 
if the apiarist have taken the precaution 
of surrounding the upper lath of some of 
these frames with a narrow fillet of wax, 
they will be quick to perceive the advan- 
tage this tempting offer presents, and will 
carefully extract the fillet, using their own 
wax as solder, and will prolong the comb 
in accordance with the indicated plan. 
Similarly — and the case is frequent in 
modern apiculture — if all the frames of 
142 



The Foundation of the City 

the hive into which the bees have been 
gathered be covered from top to bottom 
with leaves of foundation-wax, they will 
not waste time in erecting buildings across 
or beside these, or in producing useless 
wax, but, finding that the work is already 
half finished, they will be satisfied to 
deepen and lengthen each of the cells 
designed in the leaf, carefully rectifying 
these where there is the slightest devia- 
tion from the strictest vertical. Proceed- 
ing in this fashion, therefore, they will 
possess in a week a city as luxurious and 
well-constructed as the one they have 
quitted; whereas, had they been thrown 
on their own resources, it would have 
taken them two or three months to con- 
struct so great a profusion of dwellings 
and storehouses of shining wax. 



M3 



The Life of the Bee 

[43] 

This power of appropriation may well 
be considered to overstep the limit of 
instinct ; and indeed there can be nothing 
more arbitrary than the distinction we 
draw between instinct and intelligence 
properly so-called. Sir John Lubbock, 
whose observations on ants, bees, and 
wasps are so interesting and so personal, 
is reluctant to credit the bee, from the 
moment it forsakes the routine of its 
habitual labour, with any power of discern- 
ment or reasoning. This attitude of his 
may be due in some measure to an uncon- 
scious bias in favour of the ants, whose 
ways he has more specially noted ; for the 
entomologist is always inclined to regard 
that insect as the more intelligent to which 
he has more particularly devoted himself, 
and we have to be on our guard against 
this little personal predilection. As a 

U4 



The Foundation of the City- 
proof of his theory. Sir John cites as an 
instance an experiment within the reach of 
all. If you place in a bottle half a dozen 
bees and the same number of flies, and 
lay the bottle down horizontally, with its 
base to the window, you will find that the 
bees will persist, till they die of exhaustion 
or hunger, in their endeavour to discover 
an issue through the glass ; while the 
flies, in less than two minutes, will all 
have sallied forth through the neck on 
the opposite side. From this Sir John 
Lubbock concludes that the intelligence 
of the bee is exceedingly limited, and that 
the fly shows far greater skill in extricat- 
ing itself from a difficulty, and finding its 
way. This conclusion, however, would 
not seem altogether flawless. Turn the 
transparent sphere twenty times, if you 
will, holding now the base, now the neck, 
to the window, and you will find that the 
bees will turn twenty times with it, so as 
10 145 



The Life of the Bee 

always to face the light. It is their love of 
the light, it is their very intelligence, that 
is their undoing in this experiment of the 
English savant. They evidently imagine 
that the issue from every prison must be 
there where the light shines clearest ; and 
they act in accordance, and persist in too 
logical action. To them glass is a super- 
natural mystery they never have met 
with in nature ; they have had no ex- 
perience of this suddenly impenetrable 
atmosphere ; and, the greater their in- 
telligence, the more inadmissible, more 
incomprehensible, will the strange ob- 
stacle appear. Whereas the feather- 
brained flies, careless of logic as of the 
enigma of crystal, disregarding the call of 
the light, flutter wildly hither and thither, 
and, meeting here the good fortune that 
often waits on the simple, who find 
salvation there where the wiser will 
perish, necessarily end by discovering 
146 



The Foundation of the City 

the friendly opening that restores their 
liberty to them. 

The same naturalist cites yet another 
proof of the bees' lack of intelligence, and 
discovers it in the following quotation 
from the great American apiarist, the 
venerable and paternal Langstroth : — 

" As the fly was not intended to ban- 
quet on blossoms, but on substances in 
which it might easily be drowned, it 
cautiously alights on the edge of any 
vessel containing liquid food, and warily 
helps itself; while the poor bee, plunging 
in headlong, speedily perishes. The sad 
fate of their unfortunate companions does 
not in the least deter others who approach 
the tempting lure from madly alighting 
on the bodies of the dying and the dead, 
to share the same miserable end. No one 
can understand the extent of their infatua- 
tion until he has seen a confectioner's 
shop assailed by myriads of hungry bees. 
M7 



The Life of the Bee 

I have seen thousands strained out from 
the syrups in which they had perished ; 
thousands more alighting even on the 
boiling sweets ; the floors covered and win- 
dows darkened with bees, some crawling, 
others flying, and others still so completely 
besmeared as to be able neither to crawl 
nor to fly — not one in ten able to carry 
home its ill-gotten spoils, and yet the 
air filled with new hosts of thoughtless 
comers. ,, 

This, however, seems to me no more 
conclusive than might be the spectacle of 
a battlefield, or of the ravages of alcohol- 
ism, to a superhuman observer bent on 
establishing the limits of human under- 
standing. Indeed, less so, perhaps ; for 
the situation of the bee, when compared 
with our own, is strange in this world. 
It was intended to live in the midst of an 
indifferent and unconscious nature, and 
not by the side of an extraordinary being 
148 






The Foundation of the City 

who is forever disturbing the most con- 
stant laws, and producing grandiose, inex- 
plicable phenomena. In the natural order 
of things, in the monotonous life of the 
forest, the madness Langstroth describes 
would be possible only were some accident 
suddenly to destroy a hive full of honey. 
But in this case, even, there would be no 
fatal glass, no boiling sugar or cloying 
syrup ; no death or danger, therefore; 
other than that to which every animal is 
exposed while seeking its prey. 

Should we be more successful than 
they in preserving our presence of mind 
if some strange power were at every step 
to ensnare our reason ? Let us not be 
too hasty in condemning the bees for the 
folly whereof we are the authors, or in de- 
riding their intellect, which is as poorly 
equipped to foil our artifices as our own 
would be to foil those of some superior 

creature unknown to us to-day, but on 
149 



The Life of the Bee 

that account not impossible. None such 
being known at present, we conclude that 
we stand on the topmost pinnacle of life 
on this earth; but this belief, after all, 
is by no means infallible. I am not 
assuming that when our actions are un- 
reasonable, or contemptible, we merely 
fall into the snares that such a creature 
has laid; though it is not inconceivable 
that this should one day be proved true. 
On the other hand, it cannot be wise to 
deny intelligence to the bee because it has 
not yet succeeded in distinguishing us 
from the great ape or the bear. It is 
certain that there are, in us and about 
us, influences and powers no less dis- 
similar whose distinction escapes us as 
readily. 

And finally, to end this apology, where- 
in I seem somewhat to have fallen into 
the error I laid to Sir John Lubbock's 
charge, does not the capacity for folly so 
150 



The Foundation of the City- 
great in itself argue intelligence? For 
thus it is ever in the uncertain domain of 
the intellect, apparently the most vacillat- 
ing and precarious condition of matter. 
The same light that falls on the intellect 
falls also on passion, whereof none can 
tell whether it be the smoke of the flame 
or the wick. In the case above it has not 
been mere animal desire to gorge them- 
selves with honey that has urged on the 
bees. They could do this at their leisure 
in the store-rooms at home. Watch them 
in an analogous circumstance; follow them ; 
you will see that, as soon as their sac is 
filled, they will return to the hive and 
add their spoil to the general store ; and 
visit the marvellous vintage, and leave it, 
perhaps thirty times in an hour. Their 
admirable labours, therefore, are inspired 
by a single desire : zeal to bring as much 
wealth as they can to the home of their 
sisters, which is also the home of the 



The Life of the Bee 

future. When we discover a cause as 
disinterested for the follies of men, we are 
apt to call them by another name. 

[44] 

However, the whole truth must be told. 
In the midst of the marvels of their indus- 
try, their policy, their sacrifice, one thing 
exists that must always check and weaken 
our admiration ; and this is the indifference 
with which they regard the misfortunes or 
death of their comrades. There is a 
strange duality in the character of the 
bee. In the heart of the hive all help 
and love each other. They are as united 
as the good thoughts that dwell in the 
same soul. Wound one of them, and 
a thousand will sacrifice themselves to 
avenge its injury. But outside the hive 
they no longer recognise each other. 
Mutilate them, crush them, — or rather, 
do nothing of the kind ; it would be a 
152 



The Foundation of the City 

useless cruelty, for the fact is established 
beyond any doubt, — but were you to 
mutilate, or crush, on a piece of comb 
placed a few steps from their dwelling, 
twenty or thirty bees that have all issued 
from the same hive, those you have left 
untouched will not even turn their heads. 
With their tongue, fantastic as a Chinese 
weapon, they will tranquilly continue to 
absorb the liquid they hold more precious 
than life, heedless of the agony whose 
last gestures almost are touching them, 
of the cries of distress that arise all 
around. And when the comb is empty, 
so great is their anxiety that nothing shall 
be lost, that their eagerness to gather the 
honey which clings to the victims will in- 
duce them tranquilly to climb over dead 
and dying, unmoved by the presence of 
the first and never dreaming of helping 
the others. In this case, therefore, they 
have no notion of the danger they run, 
*53 



The Life of the Bee 

seeing that they are wholly untroubled by 
the death that is scattered about them, and 
they have not the slightest sense of soli- 
darity or pity. As regards the danger, 
the explanation lies ready to hand ; the 
bees know not the meaning of fear, and, 
with the exception only of smoke, are 
afraid of nothing in the world. Outside 
the hive, they display extreme condescen- 
sion and forbearance. They will avoid 
whatever disturbs them, and affect to ig- 
nore its existence, so long as it come not 
too close ; as though aware that this uni- 
verse belongs to all, that each one has his 
place there, and must needs be discreet and 
peaceful. But beneath this indulgence is 
quietly hidden a heart so sure of itself that 
it never dreams of protesting. If they are 
threatened, they will alter their course, but 
never attempt to escape. In the hive, 
however, they will not confine themselves 
to this passive ignoring of peril. They 
154 



The Foundation of the City 

will spring with incredible fury on any 
living thing, ant or lion or man, that 
dares to profane the sacred ark. This 
we may term anger, ridiculous obsti- 
nacy, or heroism, according as our mind 
be disposed. 

But of their want of solidarity outside 
the hive, and even of sympathy within it, 
I can find nothing to say. Are we to 
believe that each form of intellect possesses 
its own strange limitation, and that the 
tiny flame which with so much difficulty 
at last burns its way through inert matter 
and issues forth from the brain, is still so 
uncertain that if it illumine one point more 
strongly the others are forced into blacker 
darkness ? Here we find that the bees (or 
nature acting within them) have organised 
work in common, the love and cult of the 
future, in a manner more perfect than can 
elsewhere be discovered. Is it for this 
reason that they have lost sight of all the 
*55 



The Life of the Bee 

rest? They give their love to what lies 
ahead of them ; we bestow ours on what is 
around. And we who love here, perhaps, 
have no love left for what is beyond. 
Nothing varies so much as the direction 
of pity or charity. We ourselves should 
formerly have been far less shocked than 
we are to-day at the insensibility of the 
bees ; and to many an ancient people such 
conduct would not have seemed blame- 
worthy. And further, can we tell how 
many of the things that we do would 
shock a being who might be watching 
us as we watch the bees ? 



i£6 



w 

THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



57 



IV 

THE LIFE OF THE BEE 

[45] 

LET us now, in order to form a 
clearer conception of the bees' in^ 
tellectual power, proceed to consider their 
methods of inter-communication. There 
can be no doubting that they understand 
each other ; and indeed it were surely 
impossible for a republic so considerable, 
wherein the labours are so varied and so 
marvellously combined, to subsist amid 
the silence and spiritual isolation of so 
many thousand creatures. They must be 
able, therefore, to give expression to 
thoughts and feelings, by means either 
of a phonetic vocabulary or more prob- 



The Life of the Bee 

ably of some kind of tactile language or 
magnetic intuition, corresponding per- 
haps to senses and properties of matter 
wholly unknown to ourselves. And such 
intuition well might lodge in the myste- 
rious antennae — containing, in the case 
of the workers, according to Cheshire's 
calculation, twelve thousand tactile hairs 
and five thousand cc smell-hollows," where- 
with they probe and fathom the darkness. 
For the mutual understanding of the bees 
is not confined to their habitual labours ; 
the extraordinary also has a name and 
place in their language ; as is proved by 
the manner in which news, good or bad, 
normal or supernatural, will at once spread 
in the hive ; the loss or return of the 
mother, for instance, the entrance of an 
enemy, the intrusion of a strange queen, 
the approach of a band of marauders, the 
discovery of treasure, etc. And so char- 
acteristic is their attitude, so essentially 
160 



The Life of the Bee 

different their murmur at each of these 
special events, that the experienced apia- 
rist can without difficulty tell what is 
troubling the crowd that moves dis- 
tractedly to and fro in the shadow. 

If you desire a more definite proof, you 
have but to watch a bee that shall just 
have discovered a few drops of honey on 
your window-sill or the corner of your 
table. She will immediately gorge herself 
with it ; and so eagerly, that you will 
have time, without fear of disturbing her, 
to mark her tiny belt with a touch of paint. 
But this gluttony of hers is all on the 
surface ; the honey will not pass into the 
stomach proper, into what we might call 
her personal stomach, but remains in the 
sac, the first stomach, - — that of the com- 
munity, if one may so express it. This 
reservoir full, the bee will depart, but not 
;with the free and thoughtless motion of the 
fly or butterfly; she, on the contrary, will 
" 161 



The Life of the Bee 

for some moments fly backwards, hovering 
eagerly about the table or window, with 
her head turned toward the room. 

She is reconnoitring, fixing in her 
memory the exact position of the treasure. 
Thereupon she will go to the hive, dis- 
gorge her plunder into one of the provi- 
sion-cells, and in three or four minutes 
return, and resume operations at the 
providential window. And thus, while 
the honey lasts, will she come and go, 
at intervals of every five minutes, till 
evening, if need be ; without interruption 
or rest ; pursuing her regular journeys 
from the hive to the window, from the 
window back to the hive. 

[46] 

Many of those who have written on 

bees have thought fit to adorn the truth; 

I myself have no such desire. For 

studies of this description to possess 

z6z 



The Life of the Bee 

any interest, it is essential that they 
should remain absolutely sincere. Had 
the conclusion been forced upon me that 
bees are incapable of communicating to 
each other news of an event occurring 
outside the hive, I should, I imagine, as 
a set-off against the slight disappoint- 
ment this discovery would have entailed, 
have derived some degree of satisfaction 
in recognising once more that man, after 
all, is the only truly intelligent being who 
inhabits our globe. And there comes 
too a period of life when we have more 
joy in saying the thing that is true than 
in saying the thing that merely is wonder- 
ful. Here as in every case the principle 
holds that, should the naked truth appear 
at the moment less interesting, less great 
and noble than the imaginary embellish- 
ment it lies in our power to bestow, the 
fault must rest with ourselves who still 
are unable to perceive the astonishing 
163 



The Life of the Bee 

relation in which this truth always must 
stand to our being, and to universal law; 
and in that case it is not the truth, but 
our intellect, that needs embellishment 
and ennoblement. 

I will frankly confess, therefore, that 
the marked bee often returns alone. 
Shall we believe that in bees there exists 
the same difference of character as in 
men ; that of them too some are gossips, 
and others prone to silence ? A friend 
who stood by and watched my experi- 
ment, declared that it was evidently mere 
selfishness or vanity that caused so many 
of the bees to refrain from revealing the 
source of their wealth, and from sharing 
with others the glory of an achievement 
that must seem miraculous to the hive. 
These were sad vices indeed, which give 
not forth the sweet odour, so fragrant 
and loyal, that springs from the home of 
the many thousand sisters. But, what- 
164 



The Life of the Bee 

ever the cause, it often will also happen 
that the bee whom fortune has favoured 
will return to the honey accompanied by- 
two or three friends, I am aware that 
Sir John Lubbock, in the appendix to 
his book on " Ants, Bees, and Wasps," 
records the results of his investigations 
in long and minute tables ; and from 
these we are led to infer that it is a matter 
of rarest occurrence for a single bee to 
follow the one who has made the dis- 
covery. The learned naturalist does not 
name the race of bees which he selected 
for his experiments, or tell us whether 
the conditions were especially unfavour- 
able. As for myself I only can say that 
my own tables, compiled with great care, 
— and every possible precaution having 
been taken that the bees should not be 
directly attracted by the odour of the 
honey, — establish that on an average one 
bee will bring others four times out of ten 

165 



The Life of the Bee 

I even one day came across an extraor- 
dinary little Italian bee, whose belt I had 
marked with a touch of blue paint. In 
her second trip she brought two of her 
sisters, whom I imprisoned, without in- 
terfering with her. She departed once 
more, and this time returned with three 
friends, whom I again confined, and so 
till the end of the afternoon, when, count- 
ing my prisoners, I found that she had 
told the news to no less than eighteen 
bees. 

In fact you will find, if you make this 
experiment yourself, that communication, 
if not general, at least is frequent. The 
possession of this faculty is so well 
known to American bee-hunters that they 
trade upon it when engaged in searching 
for nests. Mr. Josiah Emery remarks 
on this head (quoted by Romanes in 
his cc Intellect of Animals ") : " Going 
to a field or wood at a distance from 
166 



' 



The Life of the Bee 

tame bees with their box of honey, they 
gather up from the flowers and imprison 
one or more bees, and after they have 
become sufficiently gorged, let them out 
to return to their home with their easily 
gotten load. Waiting patiently a longer 
or shorter time, according to the distance 
of the bee-tree, the hunter scarcely ever 
fails to see the bee or bees return accom- 
panied by other bees, which are in like 
manner imprisoned till they in turn are 
filled ; then one or more are let out at 
places distant from each other, and the 
direction in which the bee flies noted; 
and thus, by a kind of triangulation, the 
position of the bee-tree proximately 
ascertained/* 

[47] 

You will notice too in your experi- 
ments that the friends who appear to 
obey the behests of good fortune do not 
167 



j. 



The Life of the Bee 

always fly together, and that there will 
often be an interval of several seconds be- 
tween the different arrivals. As regards 
these communications, therefore, we must 
ask ourselves the question that Sir John 
Lubbock has solved as far as the ants are 
concerned. 

Do the comrades who flock to the treas- 
ure only follow the bee that first made the 
discovery, or have they been sent on by 
her, and do they find it through following 
her indications, her description of the 
place where it lies ? Between these two 
hypotheses, that refer directly to the extent 
and working of the bee's intellect, there is 
obviously an enormous difference. The 
English savant has succeeded, by means 
of an elaborate and ingenious arrangement 
of gangways, corridors, moats full of 
water, and flying bridges, in establishing 
that the ants in such cases do no more 
than follow in the track of the pioneering 
1 6* 



The Life of the Bee 

insect. With ants, that can be made to 
pass where one will, such experiments are 
possible; but for the bee, whose wings 
throw every avenue open, some other ex- 
pedient must of necessity be contrived. 
I imagined the following, which, though 
it gave no definite result, might yet, 
under more favourable conditions, and if 
organised more carefully, give rise to defi- 
nite and satisfactory conclusions. 

My study in the country is on the first 
floor, above a somewhat lofty room ; suf- 
ficiently high, therefore, to be out of the 
ordinary range of the bees' flight, except 
at times when the chestnuts and lime 
trees are in bloom. And for more than 
a week before I started this experiment 
I had kept on my table an open comb of 
honey, without the perfume having at- 
tracted, or induced the visit of, a single 
bee. Then I went to a glass hive that 
was close to the house, took an Italian 
169 



The Life of the Bee 

bee, brought her to my study, set her on 
the comb, and marked her while she was 
feeding. 

When satisfied, she flew away and re- 
turned to the hive. I followed, saw her 
pass over the surface of the crowd, plunge 
her head into an empty cell, disgorge her 
honey, and prepare to set forth again. At 
the door of the hive I had placed a glass 
box, divided by a trap into two compart- 
ments. The bee flew into this box; and 
as she was alone, and no other bee seemed 
to accompany or follow her, I imprisoned 
her and left her there. I then repeated 
the experiment on twenty different bees 
in succession. When the marked bee 
reappeared alone, I imprisoned her as I 
had imprisoned the first. But eight of 
them came to the threshold of the hive 
and entered the box accompanied by two 
or three friends. By means of the trap 
I was able to separate the marked bee 
170 



' 



The Life of the Bee 

from her companions, and to keep her 
a prisoner in the first compartment. Then, 
having marked her companions with a 
different colour, I threw open the second 
compartment and set them at liberty, 
myself returning quickly to my study 
to await their arrival. Now it is evi- 
dent that if a verbal or magnetic commu- 
nication had passed, indicating the place, 
describing the way, etc., a certain num- 
ber of the bees, having been furnished 
with this information, should have found 
their way to my room. I am compelled 
to admit that there came but a single one. 
Was this mere chance, or had she followed 
instructions received ? The experiment 
was insufficient, but circumstances pre- 
vented me from carrying it further. I 
released the cc baited " bees, and my study 
soon was besieged by the buzzing crowd 
to whom they had taught the way to the 
treasure. 

171 



The Life of the Bee 

We need not concern ourselves witti 
this incomplete attempt of mine, for many 
other curious traits compel us to recognise 
the existence among the bees of spiritual 
communications that go beyond a mere 
c< yes " or " no," and that are manifest in 
cases where mere example or gesture 
would not be sufficient. Of such, for 
instance, are the remarkable harmony of 
their work in the hive, the extraordinary 
division of labour, the regularity with 
which one worker will take the place of 
another, etc. I have often marked bees 
that went foraging in the morning, and 
found that, in the afternoon, unless flowers 
were specially abundant, they would be 
engaged in heating and fanning the brood- 
cells, or perhaps would form part of the 
mysterious, motionless curtain in whose 
midst the wax-makers and sculptors would 
be at work. Similarly I have noticed 
that workers whom I have seen gather- 
172 



^™ 



The Life of the Bee 

ing pollen for the whole of one day, will 
bring no pollen back on the morrow, 
but will concern themselves exclusively 
with the search for nectar, and vice- 
versa. 

[48] 

And further, we might mention what 
M. Georges de Layens, the celebrated 
French apiarist, terms the " Distribution 
of Bees »over Melliferous Plants." Day 
after day, at the first hour of sunrise, the 
explorers of the dawn return, and the hive 
awakes to receive the good news of the 
earth. " The lime trees are blossoming 
to-day on the banks of the canal." " The 
grass by the roadside is gay with white 
clover." " The sage and the lotus are 
about to open." " The mignonette, the 
lilies are overflowing with pollen." Where- 
upon the bees must organise quickly, and 
arrange to divide the work. Five thou- 
i73 



The Life of the Bee 

sand of the sturdiest will sally forth to the 
lime trees, while three thousand juniors go 
and refresh the white clover. Those who 
yesterday were absorbing nectar from the 
corollas will to-day repose their tongue 
and the glands of their sac, and gather red 
pollen from the mignonette, or yellow 
pollen from the tall lilies ; for never shall 
you see a bee collecting or mixing pollen 
of a different colour or species ; and indeed 
one of the chief pre-occupations of the 
hive is the methodical bestowal of these 
pollens in the store-rooms, in strict accord- 
ance with their origin and colour. Thus 
does the hidden genius issue its commands. 
The workers immediately sally forth, in 
long black files, whereof each one will 
fly straight to its allotted task. "The 
bees," says De Layens, "would seem 
to be perfectly informed as to the lo- 
cality, the relative melliferous value, 
and the distance of every melliferous 
i74 



The Life of the Bee 

plant within a certain radius from the 
hive. 

" If we carefully note the different direc- 
tions in which these foragers fly, and 
observe in detail the harvest they gather 
from the various plants around, we shall 
find that the workers distribute themselves 
over the flowers in proportion not only to 
the numbers of flowers of one species, but 
also to their melliferous value. Nay, 
more — they make daily calculations as to 
the means of obtaining the greatest possi- 
ble wealth of saccharine liquid. In the 
spring, for instance, after the willows have 
bloomed, when the fields still are bare, 
and the first flowers of the woods are the 
one resource of the bees, we shall see 
them eagerly visiting gorse and violets, 
lungworts and anemones. But, a few days 
later, when fields of cabbage and colza 
begin to flower in sufficient abundance, we 
shall find that the bees will almost entirely 
*75 



The Life of the Bee 

forsake the plants in the woods, though 
these be still in full blossom, and will con- 
fine their visits to the flowers of cabbage 
and colza alone. In this fashion they 
regulate, day by day, their distribution 
over the plants, so as to collect the great- 
est value of saccharine liquid in the least 
possible time. 

"It may fairly be claimed, therefore, for 
the colony of bees that, in its harvesting 
labours no less than in its internal economy, 
it is able to establish a rational distribution 
of the number of workers without ever 
disturbing the principle of the division of 
labour." 

C 49 ] 
But what have we to do, some will ask, 
with the intelligence of the bees ? What 
concern is it of ours whether this be a little 
less or a little more? Why weigh, with 
such infinite care, a minute fragment of 
176 



The Life of the Bee 

almost invisible matter, as though it were 
a fluid whereon depended the destiny of 
man ? I hold, and exaggerate nothing, 
that our interest herein is of the most con- 
siderabko The discovery of a sign of 
true intellect outside ourselves procures 
us something of the emotion Robinson 
Crusoe felt when he saw the imprint of 
a human foot on the sandy beach of his 
island. We seem less solitary than we 
had believed. And indeed, in our en 
deavour to understand the intellect of 
the bees, we are studying in them that 
which is most precious in our own sub- 
stance : an atom of the extraordinary 
matter which possesses, wherever it at- 
tach itself, the magnificent power of 
transfiguring blind necessity, of organ- 
ising, embellishing, and multiplying life ; 
and, most striking of all, of holding in 
suspense the obstinate force of death, 
and the mighty, irresponsible wave that 

12 177 



The Life of the Bee 

wraps almost all that exists in an eternal 
unconsciousness. 

Were we sole possessors of the particle 
of matter that, when maintained in a 
special condition of flower or incandes- 
cence, we term the intellect, we should to 
some extent be entitled to look on our- 
selves as privileged beings, and to imagine 
that in us nature achieved some kind of 
aim ; but here we discover, in the hymen- 
optera, an entire category of beings in 
whom a more or less identical aim is 
achieved. And this fact, though it decide 
nothing perhaps, still holds an honour- 
able place in the mass of tiny facts that 
help to throw light on our position in 
this world. It affords even, if considered 
from a certain point of view, a fresh proof 
of the most enigmatic part of our being ; 
for the superpositions of destinies that we 
find in the hive are surveyed by us from 
an eminence loftier than any we can attain 
178 



The Life of the Bee 

for the contemplation of the desisoies 
of man. There we see before us, in 
miniature, the large and simple lines that 
in our own disproportionate sphere we 
never have the occasion to disentangle 
and follow to the end. Spirit and matter 
are there, the race and the individual, evo- 
lution and permanence, life and death, the 
past and the future ; all gathered together 
in a retreat that our hand can lift and one 
look of our eye embrace. And may we 
not reasonably ask ourselves whether the 
mere size of a body, and the room that it 
fills in time and space, can modify to the 
extent we imagine the secret idea of na- 
ture ; the idea that we try to discover in 
the little history of the hive, which in a 
few days already is ancient, no less than 
in the great history of man, of whom three 
generations overlap a long century ? 



179 



The Life of the Bee 

[So] 

Let us go on, then, with the story of 
our hive ; let us take it up where we left 
it ; and raise, as high as we may, a fold of 
the festooned curtain in whose midst a 
strange sweat, white as snow and airier 
than the down of a wing, is beginning to 
break over the swarm. For the wax that 
is now being born is not like the wax that 
we know ; it is immaculate, it has no 
weight; seeming truly to be the soul of 
the honey, that itself is the spirit of flowers. 
And this motionless incantation has called 
it forth that it may serve us, later — in 
memory of its origin, doubtless, wherein 
it is one with the azure sky, and heavy 
with perfumes of magnificence and purity 
— as the fragrant light of the last of 
our altars. 



180 



The Life of the Bee 

[SO 

To follow the various phases of the 
secretion and employment of wax by a 
swarm that is beginning to build, is a 
matter of very great difficulty. All comes 
to pass in the blackest depths of the 
crowd, whose agglomeration, growing 
denser and denser, produces the tem- 
perature needful for this exudation, which 
is the privilege of the youngest bees. 
Huber, who was the first to study these 
phenomena, bringing incredible patience 
to bear and exposing himself at times to 
very serious danger, devotes to them 
more than two hundred and fifty pages ; 
which, though of considerable interest, 
are necessarily somewhat confused. But 
I am not treating this subject technically ; 
and while referring when necessary to 
Huber's admirable studies, I shall con- 
fine myself generally to relating what is 
181 



The Life of the Bee 

patent to any one who may gather a 
swarm into a glass hive. 

We have to admit, first of all, that we 
know not yet by what process of alchemy 
the honey transforms itself into wax in 
the enigmatic bodies of our suspended 
bees. We can only say that they will 
remain thus suspended for a period ex- 
tending from eighteen to twenty-four 
hours, in a temperature so high that one 
might almost believe that a fire was burn- 
ing in the hollow of the hive ; and then 
white and transparent scales will appear 
at the opening of four little pockets that 
every bee has underneath its abdomen. 

When the bodies of most of those 
who form the inverted cone have thus 
been adorned with ivory tablets, we shall 
see one of the bees, as though suddenly 
inspired, abruptly detach herself from the 
mass, and climb over the backs of the 
passive crowd till she reach the inner 



The Life of the Bee 

pinnacle of the cupola. To this she will 
fix herself solidly, dislodging, with re- 
peated blows of her head, such of her 
neighbours as may seem to hamper her 
movements. Then, with her mouth and 
claws, she will seize one of the eighi 
scales that hang from her abdomen, and 
at once proceed to clip it and plane it, 
extend it, knead it with her saliva, 
bend it and flatten it, roll it and straighten 
it, with the skill of a carpenter handling 
a pliable panel. When at last the sub- 
stance, thus treated, appears to her to 
possess the required dimensions and con- 
sistency, she will attach it to the highest 
point of the dome, thus laying the first, 
or rather the keystone of the new town ; 
for we have here an inverted city, hang- 
ing down from the sky, and not rising 
from the bosom of earth like a city of 
men. 

To this keystone, depending in the 
18* 



The Life of the Bee 

void, she will add other fragments of wax 
that she takes in succession from beneath 
her rings of horn ; and finally, with one 
last lick of the tongue, one last wave of 
antennae, she will go as suddenly as she 
came, and disappear in the crowd. An- 
other will at once take her place, continue 
the work at the point where the first one 
has left it, add on her own, change and 
adjust whatever may seem to oifend the 
ideal plan of the tribe, then vanish in her 
turn, to be succeeded by a third, a fourth, 
and a fifth, all appearing unexpectedly, 
suddenly, one after the other, none com- 
pleting the work, but each bringing he?* 
share to the task in which all combine. 

[5*] 

A small block of wax, formless as yet, 

hangs down from the top of the vault. 

So soon as its thickness may be deemed 

sufficient, we shall see another bee emerge 

184 



The Life of the Bee 

from the mass, her physical appearance 
differing appreciably from that of the 
foundresses who preceded her. And her 
manner displays such settled conviction, 
her movements are followed so eagerly by 
all the crowd, that we almost might fancy 
that some illustrious engineer had been 
summoned to trace in the void the site of 
the first cell of all, from which every other 
must mathematically depend. This bee 
belongs to the sculptor or carver class 
of workers ; she produces no wax her- 
self and is content to deal with the 
materials others provide. She locates the 
first cell, scoops into the block for an in- 
stant, lays the wax she has removed from 
the cavity on the borders around it ; and 
then, like the foundresses, abruptly de- 
parts and abandons her model. Her 
place is taken at once by an impatient 
worker, who continues the task that a 
third will finish, while others close by are 
185 



The Life of the Bee 

attacking the rest of the surface and the 
opposite side of the wall ; each one obey- 
ing the general law of interrupted and 
successive labour, as though it were an 
inherent principle of the hive that the 
pride of toil should be distributed, and 
every achievement be anonymous and 
common to all, that it might thereby 
become more fraternal. 

[53] 

The outline of the nascent comb may 
soon be divined. In form it will still be 
lenticular, for the little prismatic tubes 
that compose it are unequal in length, and 
diminish in proportion as they recede from 
the centre to the extremities. In thick- 
ness and appearance at present it more or 
less resembles a human tongue whose 
sides might be formed of hexagonal cells, 
contiguous, and placed back to back. 

The first cells having been built, the 
186 



The Life of the Bee 

foundresses proceed to add a second block 
of wax to the roof; and so in gradation a 
third and a fourth. These blocks follow 
each other at regular intervals so nicely 
calculated that when, at a much later 
period, the comb shall be fully developed, 
there will be ample space for the bees to 
move between its parallel walls. 

Their plan must therefore embrace the 
final thickness of every comb, which will 
be from eighty-eight to ninety-two hun- 
dredths of an inch, and at the same time 
the width of the avenues between, which 
must be about half an inch, or in other 
words twice the height of a bee, since 
there must be room to pass back to back 
between the combs. 

The bees, however, are not infallible, 
nor does their certainty appear mechanical. 
They will commit grave errors at times, 
when circumstances present unusual diffi- 
culty. They will often leave too much 
187 



The Life of the Bee 

space, or too little, between the combs. 
This they will remedy as best they can, 
either by giving an oblique twist to the 
comb that too nearly approaches the other, 
or by introducing an irregular comb into 
the gap. " The bees sometimes make 
mistakes," Reaumur remarks on this sub- 
ject, " and herein we may find yet another 
fact which appears to prove that they 
reason." 

[54] 

We know that the bees construct four 
kinds of cells. First of all, the royal 
cells, which are exceptional, and contrived 
somewhat in the shape of an acorn ; then 
the large cells destined for the rearing 
of males and storing of provisions when 
flowers super-abound -, and the small cells, 
serving as workers' cradles and ordinary 
store-rooms, which occupy normally about 
four-fifths of the built-over surface of the 
188 



The Life of the Bee 

hive. And lastly, so as to connect in 
orderly fashion the larger cells with the 
small, the bees will erect a certain number 
of what are known as transition cells. 
These must of necessity be irregular in 
form ; but so unerringly accurate are the 
dimensions of the second and third types 
that, at the time when the decimal system 
was established, and a fixed measure sought 
in nature to serve as a starting-point and 
an incontestable standard, it was proposed 
by Reaumur to select for this purpose the 
cell of the bee. 1 

Each of the cells is an hexagonal tube 

1 It was as well, perhaps, that this standard was not 
adopted. For although the diameter of the cells is 
admirably regular, it is, like all things produced by a 
living organism, not mathematically invariable in the 
same hive. Further, as M. Maurice Girard has 
pointed out, the apothem of the cell varies among 
different races of bees, so that the standard would alter 
from hive to hive, according to the species of bee that 
inhabited it. 

189 



The Life of the Bee 

placed on a pyramidal base ; and two 
layers of these tubes form the comb, their 
bases being opposed to each other in such 
fashion that each of the three rhombs or 
lozenges which on one side constitute the 
pyramidal base of one cell, composes at 
the same time the pyramidal base of three 
cells on the other. It is in these pris- 
matic tubes that the honey is stored ; and 
to prevent its escaping during the period 
of maturation, — which would infallibly 
happen if the tubes were as strictly hori- 
zontal as they appear to be, — the bees 
incline them slightly, to an angle of 

o o 

4 or 5 . 

" Besides the economy of wax," says 
Reaumur, when considering this marvellous 
construction in its entirety, " besides the 
economy of wax that results from the dis- 
position of the cells, and the fact that this 
arrangement allows the bees to fill the 
comb without leaving a single spot vacant, 
190 



The Life of the Bee 

there are other advantages also with respect 
to the solidity of the work. The angle 
at the base of each cell, the apex of 
the pyramidal cavity, is buttressed by 
the ridge formed by two faces of the 
hexagon of another cell. The two tri- 
angles, or extensions of the hexagon faces 
which fill one of the convergent angles of 
the cavity enclosed by the three rhombs, 
form by their junction a plane angle on 
the side they touch ; each of these angles, 
concave within the cell, supports, on its 
convex side, one of the sheets employed 
to form the hexagon of another cell ; the 
sheet, pressing on this angle, resists the 
force which is tending to push it out- 
wards ; and in this fashion the angles are 
strengthened. Every advantage that could 
be desired with regard to the solidity of 
each cell is procured by its own formation 
and its position with reference to the 
others." 

IQI 



The Life of the Bee 

Issl 

cc There are only/' says Dr. Reid, " three 
possible figures of the cells which can 
make them all equal and similar, without 
any useless interstices. These are the 
equilateral triangle, the square, and the 
regular hexagon. Mathematicians know 
that there is not a fourth way possible in 
which a plane shall be cut into little spaces 
that shall be equal, similar, and regular, 
without useless spaces. Of the three 
figures, the hexagon is the most proper 
for convenience and strength. Bees, as 
if they knew this, make their cells regular 
hexagons. 

"Again,. it has been demonstrated that, 
by making the bottoms of the cells to 
consist of three planes meeting in a point, 
there is a saving of material and labour in 
no way inconsiderable. The bees, as if 
acquainted with these principles of solid 
192 



The Life of the Bee 

geometry, follow them most accurately. 
It is a curious mathematical problem at 
what precise angle the three planes which 
compose the bottom of a cell ought to 
meet, in order to make the greatest pos- 
sible saving, or the least expense of mate- 
rial and labour. 1 This is one of the 

1 Reaumur suggested the following problem to the 
celebrated mathematician Koenig : " Of all possible 
hexagonal cells with pyramidal base composed of three 
equal and similar rhombs, to find the one whose con- 
struction would need the least material." Koenig' s 
answer was, the cell that had for its base three rhombs 
whose large angle was 109 26", and the small 70 
34". Another savant, Maraldi, had measured as 
exactly as possible the angles of the rhombs constructed 
by the bees, and discovered the larger to be 109 28", 
and the other 70 3 2". Between the two solutions 
there was a difference, therefore, of only 2". It is 
probable that the error, if error there be, should be 
attributed to Maraldi rather than to the bees ; for it is 
impossible for any instrument to measure the angles of 
the cells, which are not very clearly defined, with 
infallible precision. 

The problem suggested to Koenig was put to 



The Life of the Bee 

problems which belong to the higher parts 
of mathematics. It has accordingly been 
resolved by some mathematicians, par- 
ticularly by the ingenious Maclaurin, by 
a fluctionary calculation which is to be 
found in the Transactions of the Royal 
Society of London. He has determined 
precisely the angle required, and he found, 
by the most exact mensuration the subject 
would admit, that it is the very angle in 
which the three planes at the bottom of 
the cell of a honey comb do actually 
meet." 

[56] 

I myself do not believe that the bees 
indulge in these abstruse calculations ; 
but, on the other hand, it seems equally 
impossible to me that such astounding re- 

another mathematician, Cramer, whose solution came 
even closer to that of the bees, viz., 109 28^" for 
the large angle, and 70 ° 31^" for the small. 

194 



The Life of the Bee 

suits can be due to chance alone, or to the 
mere force of circumstance. The wasps, 
for instance, also build combs with hex- 
agonal cells, so that for them the problem 
was identical, and they have solved it in a 
far less ingenious fashion. Their combs 
have only one layer of cells, thus lacking 
the common base that serves the bees for 
their two opposite layers. The wasps' 
comb, therefore, is not only less regular, 
but also less substantial ; and so waste- 
fully constructed that, besides loss of ma- 
terial, they must sacrifice about a third of 
the available space and a quarter of the 
energy they put forth. Again, we find that 
the trigonae and meliponae, which are veri- 
table and domesticated bees, though of less 
advanced civilisation, erect only one row 
of rearing-cells, and support their horizon- 
tal, superposed combs on shapeless and 
costly columns of wax. Their provision- 
cells are merely great pots, gathered to- 
i95 



The Life of the Bee 

gether without any order ; and, at the 
point between the spheres where these 
might have intersected and induced a 
profitable economy of space and material, 
the meliponae clumsily insert a section of 
cells with flat walls. Indeed, to compare 
one of their nests with the mathematical 
cities of our own honey-flies, is like 
imagining a hamlet composed of primitive 
huts side by side with a modern town ; 
whose ruthless regularity is the logical, 
though perhaps somewhat charmless, re- 
sult of the genius of man, that to-day, 
more fiercely than ever before, seeks to 
conquer space, matter, and time. 

[57] 

There is a theory, originally pro- 
pounded by Buffon and now revived, 
which assumes that the bees have not the 
least intention of constructing hexagons 
with a pyramidal base, but that their 
196 



The Life of the Bee 

desire is merely to contrive round cells 
in the wax ; only, that as their neighbours, 
and those at work on the opposite side of 
the comb, are digging at the same mo- 
ment and with the same intentions, the 
points where the cells meet must of neces- 
sity become hexagonal. Besides, it is 
said, this is precisely what happens to 
crystals, the scales of certain kinds of fish, 
soap-bubbles, etc., as it happens in the 
following experiment that BufFon sug- 
gested. " If," he said, " you fill a dish 
with peas or any other cylindrical bean, 
pour as much water into it as the space 
between the beans will allow, close it care- 
fully and then boil the water, you will 
find that all these cylinders have become 
six-sided columns. And the reason is 
evident, being indeed purely mechanical ; 
each of the cylindrical beans tends, as it 
swells, to occupy the utmost possible 
space within a given space ; wherefore it 
197 



The Life of the Bee 

follows that the reciprocal compression 
compels them all to become hexagonal. 
Similarly each bee seeks to occupy the 
utmost possible space within a given 
space, with the necessary result that, its 
body being cylindrical, the cells become 
hexagonal for the same reason as before, 
viz., the working of reciprocal obstacles." 

[58] 

These reciprocal obstacles, it would 
seem, are capable of marvellous achieve- 
ment ; on the same principle, doubtless, 
that the vices of man produce a general 
virtue, whereby the human race, hateful 
often in its individuals, ceases to be so in 
the mass. We might reply, first of all, 
with Brougham, Kirby and Spence, and 
others, that experiments with peas and 
soap-bubbles prove nothing ; for the rea- 
son that in both cases the pressure pro- 
duces only irregular forms, and in no 
198 



The Life of the Bee 

wise explains the existence of the pris- 
matic base of the cells. But above all 
we might answer that there are more 
ways than one of dealing with rigid neces- 
sity ; that the wasp, < the humble-bee, the 
trigonae and meliponae of Mexico and 
Brazil achieve very different and mani- 
festly inferior results, although the cir- 
cumstances, and their own intentions, are 
absolutely identical with those of the 
bees. It might further be urged that if 
the bee's cell does indeed follow the law 
that governs crystals, snow, soap-bubbles, 
as well as Buffon's boiled peas, it also, 
through its general symmetry, disposition 
in opposite layers, and angle of inclina- 
tion, obeys many other laws that are not 
to be found in matter. May we not say, 
too, of man that all his genius is com- 
prised in his fashion of handling kindred 
necessities ? And if it appear to us that 
his manner of treating these is the best 
199 



The Life of the Bee 

there can possibly be, the reason only 
can lie in the absence of a judge superior 
to ourselves. But it is well that argu- 
ment should make way for fact ; and 
indeed, to the objection based on an 
experiment, the best reply of all must 
be a counter-experiment. 

In order to satisfy myself that hexag- 
onal architecture truly was written in the 
spirit of the bee, I cut off and removed 
one day a disc of the sir.e of a five- 
franc piece from the centre of a comb, 
at a spot where there were both brood- 
cells and cells full of honey. I cut into 
the circumference of this disc, at the 
intersecting point of the pyramidal cells ; 
inserted a piece of tin on the base of one 
of these sections, shaped exactly to its 
dimensions, and possessed of resistance 
sufficient to prevent the bees from bend- 
ing or twisting it. Then I replaced the 
slice of comb, duly furnished with its 
200 



The Life of the Bee 

slab of tin, on the spot whence I had 
removed it ; so that, while one side of 
the comb presented no abnormal feature, 
the damage having been repaired, the 
other displayed a sort of deep cavity, 
covering the space of about thirty cells, 
with the piece of tin as its base. The 
bees were disconcerted at first; they 
flocked in numbers to inspect and ex- 
amine this curious chasm ; day after day 
they wandered agitatedly to and fro, ap- 
parently unable to form a decision. But, 
as I fed them copiously every evening, 
there came a moment when they had no 
more cells available for the storage of 
provisions. Thereupon they probably 
summoned their great engineers, distin- 
guished sculptors, and wax-workers, and 
invited them to turn this useless cavity 
to profitable account. 

The wax -makers having gathered around 
and formed themselves into a dense fes- 

201 



The Life of the Bee 

toon, so that the necessary heat might be 
maintained, other bees descended into the 
hole and proceeded solidly to attach the 
metal, and connect it with the walls of ad- 
jacent cells, by means of little waxen hooks 
which they distributed regularly over its 
surface. In the upper semicircle of the 
disc they then began to construct three 
or four cells, uniting these to the hooks. 
Each of these transition, or accommo- 
dation, cells was more or less deformed 
at the top, to allow of its being soldered 
to the adjoining cell on the comb ; but 
its lower portion already designed on the 
tin three very clear angles, whence there 
ran three little straight lines that correctly 
indicated the first half of the following 
cell. 

After forty-eight hours, and notwith- 
standing the fact that only three bees at 
a time were able to work in the cavity, 
the entire surface of the tin was covered 
202 



The Life of the Bee 

with outlined cells. These were less reg 
ular, certainly, than those of an ordinary 
comb ; wherefore the queen, having in- 
spected them, wisely declined to lay any 
eggs there, for the generation that would 
have arisen therefrom would necessarily 
have been deformed. Each cell, how- 
ever, was a perfect hexagon ; nor did it 
contain a single crooked line, a single 
curved figure or angle. And yet the 
ordinary conditions had all been changed ; 
the cells had neither been scooped out of 
a block, according to Huber's descrip- 
tion, nor had they been designed within a 
waxen hood, and, from being circular at 
first, been subsequently converted into 
hexagons by the pressure of adjoining 
cells, as explained by Darwin. Neither 
could there be question here of reciprocal 
obstacles, the cells having been formed 
one by one, and their first lines traced on 
what practically was a bare table. It would 
203 



The Life of the Bee 

seem incontestable, therefore, that the hex- 
agon is not merely the result of mechani- 
cal necessities, but that it has its true 
place in the plans, the experience, the 
intellect and will of the bee. I may 
relate here another curious instance of 
the workers* sagacity : the cells they built 
on the tin had no other base than the 
metal itself. The engineers of the corps 
had evidently decided that the tin could 
adequately retain the honey; and had 
considered that, the substance being im- 
permeable, they need not waste the mate- 
rial they value so highly by covering the 
metal with a layer of wax. But, a short 
time after, some drops of honey having 
been placed in two of these cells, the bees 
discovered, in tasting it, that the contact 
of the metal had a deteriorating effect. 
Thereupon they reconsidered the matter, 
and covered over with wax the en^re sur- 
face of the tin. 

204 



The Life of the Bee 

[ 59 ] 

Were it our desire to throw light upon 
all the secrets of this geometric architect- 
ure, we should have more than one curi- 
ous question still to consider ; as for 
instance the shape of the first cells, 
which, being attached to the roof, are 
modified in such a manner as to touch 
the roof at the greatest possible number 
of points. 

The design of the principal thorough- 
fares is determined by the parallelism of 
the combs ; but we must admire the in- 
genious construction of alleys and gang- 
ways through and around the comb, so 
skilfully contrived as to provide short cuts 
in every direction and prevent conges- 
tion of traffic, while ensuring free circula- 
tion of air. And finally we should have 
to study the construction of transition 

cells, wherein we see a unanimous instinct 
205 



The Life of the Bee 

at work that impels the bees at a given 
moment to increase the size of their 
dwellings. Three reasons may dictate 
this step : an extraordinary harvest may 
call for larger receptacles, the workers 
may consider the population to be suffi- 
ciently numerous, or it may have become 
necessary that males should be born. Nor 
can we in such cases refrain from wonder- 
ing at the ingenious economy, the unerr- 
ing, harmonious conviction, with which the 
bees will pass from the small to the large, 
from the large to the small ; from perfect 
symmetry to, where unavoidable, its very 
reverse, returning to ideal regularity so 
soon as the laws of a live geometry will 
allow; and all the time not losing a cell, 
not suffering a single one of their numer- 
ous structures to be sacrificed, to be ridic- 
ulous, uncertain, or barbarous, or any 
section thereof to become unfit for use. 
But I fear that I have already wandered 
206 



The Life of the Bee 

into many details that will have but si en- 
der interest for the reader, whose eyes 
perhaps may never have followed a flight 
of bees ; or who may have regarded them 
only with the passing interest with which 
we are all of us apt to regard the flower, 
the bird or the precious stone, asking of 
these no more than a slight superficial 
assurance, and forgetting that the most 
trivial secret of the non-human object we 
behold in nature connects more closely 
perhaps with the profound enigma of our 
origin and our end, than the secret of 
those of our passions that we study the 
most eagerly and the most passionately. 

[60] 

And I will pass over too — in my de- 
sire that this essay shall not become too 
didactic — the remarkable instinct that in- 
duces the bees at times to thin and demol- 
ish the extremity of their combs, when 
207 



The Life of the Bee 

these are to be enlarged or lengthened ; 
though it must be admitted that in this 
case the " blind building instinct " fails 
signally to account for their demolishing 
in order that they may rebuild, or undoing 
what has been done that it may be done 
afresh, and with more regularity. I will 
content myself also with a mere reference 
to the remarkable experiment that enables 
us, with the aid of a piece of glass, to 
compel the bees to start their combs at a 
right angle ; when they most ingeniously 
contrive that the enlarged cells on the 
convex side shall coincide with the reduced 
cells on the concave side of the comb. 

But before finally quitting this subject 
let us pause, though it be but for an in- 
stant, and consider the mysterious fashion 
in which they manage to act in concert 
and combine their labour, when simul- 
taneously carving two opposite sides of a 
comb, and unable therefore to see each 
*o8 



The Life of the Bee 

other. Take a finished comb to the light> 
fix your eyes on the diaphanous wax ; you 
will see, most clearly designed, an entire 
network of sharply cut prisms, a whole 
system of concordances so infallible that 
one might almost believe them to be 
stamped on steel. 

I wonder whether those who never have 
seen the interior of a hive can form an ade- 
quate conception of the arrangement and 
aspect of the combs. Let them imagine — 
we will take a peasant's hive, where the bee 
is left entirely to its own resources — let 
them imagine a dome of straw or osier, 
divided from top to bottom by five, six, 
eight, sometimes ten, strips of wax, resemb- 
ling somewhat great slices of bread, that run 
in strictly parallel lines from the top of 
the dome to the floor, espousing closely 
the shape of the ovoid walls. Between 
these strips is contrived a space of about 
half an inch, to enable the bees to stand 
14 209 



The Life of the Bee 

and to pass each other. At the moment 
when they begin to construct one of 
these strips at the top of the hive, the 
waxen wall (which is its rough model, and 
will later be thinned and extended) is still 
very thick, and completely excludes the 
fifty or sixty bees at work on its inner 
face from the fifty or sixty simultaneously 
engaged in carving the outer, so that it is 
wholly impossible for one group to see the 
other, unless indeed their sight be able to 
penetrate opaque matter. And yet there 
is not a hole that is scooped on the inner 
surface, not a fragment of wax that is 
added, but corresponds with mathematical 
precision to a protuberance or cavity on 
the outer surface, and vice versa. How 
does this happen? How is it that one 
does not dig too deep, another not deep 
enough ? Whence the invariable magical 
coincidence between the angles of the 
lozenges ? What is it tells the bees that 

2IO 



The Life of the Bee 

at this point they must begin, and at that 
point stop? Once again we must con- 
tent ourselves with the reply, that is no 
reply : " It is a mystery of the hive." 
Huber has sought to explain this mys- 
tery by suggesting that the pressure of 
the bees' hooks and teeth may possibly 
produce slight projections, at regular in- 
tervals, on the opposite side of the comb ; 
or that they may be able to estimate the 
thickness of the block by the flexibility, 
elasticity, or some other physical quality of 
the wax ; or again, that their antennae, 
which seem so well adapted for the ques- 
tioning of the finer, less evident side of 
things, may serve as a compass in the in- 
visible; or, lastly, that the position of 
every cell may derive mathematically from 
the arrangement and dimensions of the 
cells on the first row, and thus dispense 
with the need for further measurement. 
But these explanations are evidently in- 

211 



The Life of the Bee 

sufficient; the first are mere hypotheses 
that cannot be verified, the others do no 
more than transplant the mystery. And 
useful as it may be to transplant mystery 
as often as we possibly can, it were not 
wise to imagine that a mystery has 
ceased to be because we have shifted its 
home. 

[61] 

Now let us leave these dreary building 
grounds, this geometrical desert of cells. 
The combs have been started, and are 
becoming habitable. Though it be here 
the infinitely little that, without apparent 
hope, adds itself to the infinitely little ; 
though our eye with its limited vision 
look and see nothing, the work of wax, 
halting neither by day nor by night, will 
advance with incredible quickness. The 
impatient queen already has more than 
once paced the stockades that gleam whit© 

212 



The Life of the Bee 

in the darkness ; and no sooner is the 
first row of dwellings complete than she 
takes possession with her escort of coun- 
sellors, guardians, or servants — for we 
know not whether she lead or be led, be 
venerated or supervised. When the spot 
has been reached that she, or her urgent 
advisers, may regard as favourable, she 
arches her back, bends forward, and intro- 
duces the extremity of her long spindle- 
shaped abdomen into one of the cells ; the 
little eager heads of her escort meanwhile 
forming a passionate circle around her r 
watching her with their enormous black 
eyes, supporting her, caressing her wings, 
and waving their feverish antennae as 
though to encourage, incite, or congratulate. 
You may easily discover the spot where 
the queen shall be found by the sort of 
starry cockade, or oval brooch perhaps 
of the imposing kind our grandmothers 
used to wear, of which she forms the 
213 



The Life of the Bee 

central stone. And one may mention 
here the curious fact that the workers 
always avoid turning their back on the 
queen. No sooner has she approached 
a group than they will invariably arrange 
themselves so as to face her with eyes and 
antennae, and to walk backwards before 
hen It is a token of respect, or of 
solicitude, that, unlikely as it may seem, 
is nevertheless constant and general. But 
to return to the queen. During the 
slight spasm that visibly accompanies the 
emission of an egg, one of her daughters 
will often throw her arms round her and 
appear to be whispering to her, brow 
pressed to brow and mouth to mouth. 
But the 'queen, in no wise disturbed by 
this somewhat bold demonstration, takes 
her time, tranquilly, calmly, wholly ab- 
sorbed by the mission that would seem 
amorous delight to her rather than labour. 
And after some seconds she will rise, very 
214 



The Life of the Bee 

quietly, take a step back, execute a slight 
turn on herself, and proceed to the next 
cell, into which she will first, before intro- 
ducing her abdomen, dip her head to make 
sure that all is in order and that she is 
not laying twice in the same cell ; and in 
the meanwhile two or three of her escort 
will have plunged into the cell she has 
quitted to see whether the work be duly 
accomplished, and to care for, and ten- 
derly house, the little bluish egg she has 
laid. 

From this moment, up to the first frosts 
of autumn, she does not cease laying ; 
she lays while she is being fed, and even 
in her sleep, if indeed she sleeps at all, 
she still lays. She represents henceforth 
the devouring force of the future, which 
invades every corner of the kingdom. 
Step by step she pursues the unfortunate 
workers who are exhaustedly, feverishly 
erecting the cradles her fecundity de- 
215 



The Life of the Bee 

mands. We have here the union of 
two mighty instincts; and their workings 
throw into light, though they leave unre- 
solved, many an enigma of the hive. 

It will happen, for instance, that the 
workers will distance her, and acquire a 
certain start ; whereupon, mindful of 
their duties as careful housewives to pro- 
vide for the bad days ahead, they hasten 
to fill with honey the cells they have 
wrested from the avidity of the species. 
But the queen approaches ; material wealth 
must give way to the scheme of nature ; 
and the distracted workers are compelled 
with all speed to remove the importunate 
treasure. 

But assume them to be a whole comb 
ahead, and to have no longer before them 
her who stands for the tyranny of days 
they shall none of them see ; we find 
then that they eagerly, hurriedly, build 
a zone of large cells, cells for males ; 
216 



The Life of the Bee 

whose construction is very much easier, 
and far more rapid. When the queen 
in her turn attains this unthankful zone, 
she will regretfully lay a few eggs there, 
then cease, pass beyond, and clamour 
for more workers' cells. Her daughters 
obey ; little by little they reduce the 
cells ; and then the pursuit starts afresh, 
till at last the insatiable mother shall have 
traversed the whole circumference of the 
hive, and have returned to the first cells. 
These, by this time, will be empty ; for 
the first generation will have sprung into 
life, soon to go forth, from their shadowy 
corner of birth, disperse over the neigh- 
bouring blossoms, people the rays of the 
sun and quicken the smiling hours; and 
then sacrifice themselves in their turn 
to the new generations that are already 
filling their place in the cradles. 



*i; 



The Life of the Bee 

[62] 

And whom does the queen-bee obey? 
She is ruled by nourishment given her ; 
for she does not take her own food, but 
is fed like a child by the very workers 
whom her fecundity harasses. And the 
food these workers deal out is nicely pro- 
portioned to the abundance of flowers, to 
the spoil brought back by those who 
visit the calyces. Here, then, as every- 
where else in the world, one part of the 
circle is wrapped in darkness ; here, as 
everywhere, it is from without, from an 
unknown power, that the supreme order 
issues ; and the bees, like ourselves, obey 
the nameless lord of the wheel that inces- 
santly turns on itself, and crushes the 
wills that have set it in motion. 

Some little time back, I conducted a 
friend to one of my hives of glass, and 
showed him the movements of this wheel, 
218 



The Life of the Bee 

which was as readily perceptible as the 
great wheel of a clock ; showed him, in 
all its bareness, the universal agitation 
on every comb, the perpetual, frantic, 
bewildered haste of the nurses around 
the brood-cells ; the living gangways and 
ladders formed by the makers of wax, the 
abounding, unceasing activity of the entire 
population, and their pitiless, useless ef- 
fort ; the ardent, feverish coming and 
going of all, the general absence of sleep 
save in the cradles alone, around which 
continuous labour kept watch ; the denial 
of even the repose of death in a home 
which permits no illness and accords no 
grave ; and my friend, his astonishment 
over, soon turned his eyes away, and in 
them I could read the signs of I know 
not what saddened fear. 

And truly, underlying the gladness that 
we note first of all in the hive, underly- 
ing the dazzling memories of beautiful 
219 



The Life of the Bee 

days that render it the storehouse of 
summer's most precious jewels, underly- 
ing the blissful journeys that knit it so 
close to the flowers and to running water, 
to the sky, to the peaceful abundance of 
all that makes for beauty and happiness 
— underlying all these exterior joys, there 
reposes a sadness as deep as the eye of 
man can behold. And we, who dimly 
gaze on these things with our own blind 
eyes, we know full well that it is not they 
alone that we are striving to see, not 
they alone that we cannot understand, 
but that before us there lies a pitiable 
form of the great power that quickens 
us also. 

Sad let it be, as all things in nature are 
sad, when our eyes rest too closely upon 
them. And thus it ever shall be so long 
as we know not her secret, know not even 
whether secret truly there be. And should 
we discover some day that there is no secret, 

220 



The Life of the Bee 

or that the secret is monstrous, other duties 
will then arise that, as yet, perhaps, have 
no name. Let our heart, if it will, in the 
meanwhile repeat, " It is sad ; " but let 
our reason be content to add, " Thus it is." 
At the present hour the duty before us is 
to seek out that which perhaps may be hid- 
ing behind these sorrows ; and, urged on 
by this endeavour, we must not turn our 
eyes away, but steadily, fixedly, watch these 
sorrows and study them, with a courage and 
interest as keen as though they were joys. 
It is right that before we judge nature, 
before we complain, we should at least 
ask every question that we can possibly 
ask. 

[63] 

We have seen that the workers^ when 

free for the moment from the threatening 

fecundity of the queen, hasten to erect 

cells for provisions, whose construction is 

221 






The Life of the Bee 

m«*re economical and capacity greater. 
We have seen, too, that the queen prefers 
to lay in the smaller cells, for which she is 
incessantly clamouring. When these are 
wanting, however, or till they be provided, 
she resigns herself to laying her eggs in 
the large cells she finds on her road. 

These eggs, though absolutely identical 
with those from which workers are 
hatched, will give birth to males, or 
drones. Now, conversely to what takes 
place when a worker is turned into queen, 
it is here neither the form nor the capac- 
ity of the cell that produces this change ; 
for from an tgg laid in a large cell and 
afterwards transferred to that of a worker 
(a most difficult operation, because of 
the microscopic minuteness and extreme 
fragility of the egg, but one that I have 
four or five times successfully accom- 
plished) there will issue an undeniable 
male, though more or less atrophied. It 
222 



The Life of the Bee 

follows, therefore, that the queen must 
possess the power, while laying, of know- 
ing or determining the sex of the egg, 
and of adapting it to the cell over which 
she is bending. She will rarely make a 
mistake. How dpes she contrive, from 
among the myriad eggs her ovaries con- 
tain, to separate male from female, and 
lower them, at will, into the unique 
oviduct ? 

Here, yet again, there confronts us an 
enigma of the hive ; and in this case one 
of the most unfathomable. We know 
that the virgin queen is not sterile ; but 
the eggs that she lays will produce only 
males. It is not till after the impregnation 
of the nuptial flight that she can produce 
workers or drones at will. The nuptial 
flight places her permanently in posses- 
sion, till death, of the spermatozoa torn 
from her unfortunate lover. These sper- 
matozoa, whose number Dr. Leuckart 
223 



The Lite of the Bee 

estimates at twenty-five millions, are 
preserved alive in a special gland known 
as the spermatheca, that is situate under 
the ovaries, at the entrance to the common 
oviduct. It is imagined that the narrow 
aperture of the smaller cells, and the 
manner in which the form of this aperture 
compels the queen to bend forward, ex- 
ercise a certain pressure upon the sper- 
matheca, in consequence of which the 
spermatozoa spring forth and fecundate 
the egg as it passes. In the large cells 
this pressure would not take place, and 
the spermatheca would therefore not open. 
Others, again, believe that the queen has 
perfect control over the muscles that open 
and close the spermatheca on the vagina ; 
and these muscles are certainly very 
numerous, complex, and powerful. For 
myself, I incline to the second of these 
hypotheses, though I do not for a mo- 
ment pretend to decide which is the more 
224 



The Life of the Bee 

correct ; for indeed, the further we go 
and the more closely we study, the more 
plainly is it brought home to us that we 
merely are waifs shipwrecked on the 
ocean of nature ; and ever and anon, 
from a sudden wave that shall be more 
transparent than others, there leaps forth 
a fact that in an instant confounds all we 
imagined we knew. But the reason of 
my preferring the second theory is that, 
for one thing, the experiments of a Bor- 
deaux bee-keeper, M. Drory, have shown 
that in cases where all the large cells have 
been removed from the hive, the mother 
will not hesitate, when the moment for 
laying male eggs has come, to deposit 
these in workers' cells ; and that, in- 
versely, she will lay workers' eggs in cells 
provided for males, if she have no others 
at her disposal. And, further, we learn 
from the interesting observations of M. 
Fabre on the Osmiae, which are wild and 



The Life of the Bee 

solitary bees of the Gastrilegidae family, 
that not only does the Osmia know in 
advance the sex of the egg she will lay, 
but that this sex is " optional for the 
mother, who decides it in accordance with 
the space of which she disposes ; this space 
being often governed by chance and not 
to be modified ; and she will deposit a 
male egg here and a female there" I 
shall not enter into the details of the 
great French entomologist's experiments, 
for they are exceedingly minute, and 
would take us too far. But whichever 
be the hypothesis we prefer to accept, 
either will serve to explain the queen's 
inclination to lay her eggs in workers' 
cells, without it being necessary to credit 
her with the least concern for the future. 

It is not impossible that this slave- 
mother, whom we are inclined to pity, may 
be indeed a great amorist, a great volup- 
tuary, deriving a certain enjoyment, an 
226 



The Life of the Bee 

after-taste, as it were, of her one mar- 
riage-flight, from the union of the male 
and female principle that thus comes to 
pass in her being. Here again nature, 
never so ingenious, so cunningly pru- 
dent and diverse, as when contriving her 
snares of love, will not have failed to 
provide a certain pleasure as a bait in 
the interest of the species. And yet let 
us pause for a moment, and not become 
the dupes of our own explanation. For 
indeed, to attribute an idea of this kind to 
nature, and regard that as sufficient, is 
like flinging a stone into an unfathomable 
gulf we may find in the depths of a grotto, 
and imagining that the sounds it creates 
as it falls shall answer our every question, 
or reveal to us aught beside the immensity 
of the abyss. 

When we say to ourselves, " This thing 
is of nature's devising ; it is she has or- 
dained this marvel ; those are her desires 

327 



The Life of the Bee 

that we see before us ! " the fact is merely 
that our special attention has been drawn 
to some tiny manifestation of life upon 
the boundless surface of matter that we 
deem inactive, and choose to describe, with 
evident inaccuracy, as nothingness and 
death. A purely fortuitous chain of 
events has allowed this special manifesta- 
tion to attract our attention ; but a thou- 
sand others, no less interesting, perhaps, 
and informed with no less intelligence, 
have vanished, not meeting with a like 
good-fortune, and have lost for ever the 
chance of exciting our wonder. It were 
rash to affirm aught beside ; and all that 
remains, our reflections, our obstinate 
search for the final cause, our admiration 
and hopes — all these in truth are no 
more than our feeble cry as, in the depths 
of the unknown, we clash against what is 
more unknowable still ; and this feeble 
cry declares the highest degree of indi- 

2§8 



The Life of the Bee 

vidual existence attainable for us on this 
mute and impenetrable surface, even as 
the flight of the condor, the song of the 
nightingale, reveal to them the highest 
degree of existence their species allows. 
But the evocation of this feeble cry, when- 
ever opportunity offers, is none the less 
one of our most unmistakable duties ; nor 
should we let ourselves be discouraged by 
its apparent futility,, 



229 



V 

THE YOUNG QUEENS 



*$* 



H 



V 

THE YOUNG QUEENS 

[6 4 ] 
ERE let us close our hive, where we 
find that life is reassuming its cir- 
cular movement, is extending and multi- 
plying, to be again divided as soon as it 
shall attain the fulness of its happiness 
and strength ; and let us for the last time 
reopen the mother-city, and see what is 
happening there after the departure of the 
swarm. 

The tumult having subsided, the hap- 
less city, that two thirds of her children 
have abandoned for ever, becomes feeble, 
empty, moribund ; like a body from which 
the blood has been drained. Some thou- 
sands of bees have remained, however ; and 
«33 



The Life of the Bee 

these, though a trifle languid perhaps, are 
still immovably faithful to the duty a 
precise destiny has laid upon them, still 
conscious of the part that they have them- 
selves to play ; they resume their labours, 
therefore, fill as best they can the place 
of those who have gone, remove all trace 
of the orgy, carefully house the provisions 
that have escaped pillage, sally forth to 
the flowers again, and keep scrupulous 
guard over the hostages of the future. 

And for all that the moment may 
appear gloomy, hope abounds wherever 
the eye may turn. We might be in one 
of the castles of German legend, whose 
walls are composed of myriad phials con- 
taining the souls of men about to be born. 
For we are in the abode of life that goes 
before life. On all sides, asleep in their 
closely sealed cradles, in this infinite 
superposition of marvellous six-sided cells, 
lie thousands of nymphs, whiter than 
234 



The Young Queens 

milk, who with folded arms and head 
bent forward await the hour of awakening. 
In their uniform tombs, that, isolated, 
become nearly transparent, they seem 
almost like hoary gnomes, lost in deep 
thought, or legions of virgins whom the 
folds of the shroud have contorted, who 
are buried in hexagonal prisms that some 
inflexible geometrician has multiplied to 
the verge of delirium. 

Over the entire area that the vertical 
walls enclose, and in the midst of this 
growing world that so soon shall trans- 
form itself, that shall four or five times in 
succession assume fresh vestments, and 
then spin its own winding-sheet in the 
shadow, hundreds of workers are dancing 
and flapping their wings. They appear 
thus to generate the necessary heat, and 
accomplish some other object besides that 
is still more obscure; for this dance of 
theirs contains some extraordinary move- 
235 



The Life of the Bee 

ments, so methodically conceived that they 
must infallibly answer some purpose which 
no observer has as yet, I believe, been 
able to divine. 

A few days more, and the lids of these 
myriad urns — whereof a considerable hive 
will contain from sixty to eighty thousand 
— will break, and two large and earnest 
black eyes will appear, surmounted by 
antennae that already are groping at life, 
while active jaws are busily engaged in 
enlarging the opening from within. The 
nurses at once come running ; they help 
the young bee to emerge from her 
prison, they clean her and brush her, and 
at the tip of their tongue present the 
first honey of the new life. But the bee, 
that has come from another world, is be- 
wildered still, trembling and pale ; she 
wears the feeble look of a little old man 
who might have escaped from his tomb, 
or perhaps of a traveller strewn with the 
236 



The Young Queens 

powdery dust of the ways that lead unto 
life. She is perfect, however, from head 
to foot ; she knows at once all that has to 
be known ; and, like the children of the 
people, who learn, as it were, at their birth, 
that for them there shall never be time 
to play or to laugh, she instantly makes 
her way to the cells that are closed, and 
proceeds to beat her wings and to dance 
in cadence, so that she in her turn may 
quicken her buried sisters ; nor does she 
for one instant pause to decipher the 
astounding enigma of her destiny, or her 
race. 

The most arduous labours will, how- 
ever, at first be spared her. A week 
must elapse from the day of her birth 
before she will quit the hive ; she will 
then perform her first "cleansing flight," 
and absorb the air into her tracheae, which, 
*37 



The Life of the Bee 

filling, expand her body, and proclaim her 
the bride of space. Thereupon she re- 
turns to the hive, and waits yet one week 
more ; and then, with her sisters born 
the same day as herself, she will for the 
first time set forth to visit the flowers. 
A special emotion now will lay hold of 
her ; one that French apiarists term the 
cc soleil d'artifice," but which might more 
rightly perhaps be called the " sun of dis- 
quiet." For it is evident that the bees 
are afraid, that these daughters of the 
crowd, of secluded darkness, shrink from 
the vault of blue, from the infinite loneli- 
ness of the light; and their joy is halting, 
and woven of terror. They cross the 
threshold and pause ; they depart, they 
return, twenty times. They hover aloft 
in the air, their head persistently turned 
to the home ; they describe great soaring 
circles that suddenly sink beneath the 
weight of regret ; and their thirteen thou- 
238 



The Young Queens 

sand eyes will question, reflect, and retain 
the trees and the fountain, the gate and 
the walls, the neighbouring windows and 
houses, till at last the aerial course where- 
on their return shall glide have become 
as indelibly stamped in their memory as 
though it were marked in space by two 
lines of steel. 

[66] 

A new mystery confronts us here, which 
we shall do well to challenge ; for though 
it reply not, its silence still will extend the 
field of our conscious ignorance, which 
is the most fertile of all that our activity 
knows. How do the bees contrive to 
find their way back to the hive that they 
cannot possibly see, that is hidden, per- 
haps, by the trees, that in any event must 
form an imperceptible point in space ? 
How is it that if taken in a box to a spot 
two or three miles from their home, they 
*39 



The Life of the Bee 

will almost invariably succeed in finding 
their way back ? 

Do obstacles offer no barrier to their 
sight ; do they guide themselves by cer- 
tain indications and landmarks; or do they 
possess that peculiar, imperfectly under- 
stood sense that we ascribe to the swal- 
lows and pigeons, for instance, and term 
the " sense of direction " ? The experi- 
ments of J. H. Fabre, of Lubbock, and, 
above all, of Romanes (Nature, 29 Oct. 
1886) seem to establish that it is not this 
strange instinct that guides them. I have, 
on the other hand, more than once no- 
ticed that they appear to pay no attention 
to the colour or form of the hive. They 
are attracted rather by the ordinary ap- 
pearance of the platform on which their 
home reposes, by the position of the 
entrance, and of the alighting-board. But 
this even is merely subsidiary ; were the 
front of the hive to be altered from top 
240 



The Young Queens 

to bottom, during the workers' absence, 
they would still unhesitatingly direct their 
course to it from out the far depths of the 
horizon ; and only when confronted by 
the unrecognisable threshold would they 
seem for one instant to pause. Such ex- 
periments as lie in our power point rather 
to their guiding themselves by an extraor- 
dinarily minute and precise appreciation 
of landmarks. It is not the hive that 
they seem to remember, but its position, 
calculated to the minutest fraction, in its 
relation to neighbouring objects. And so 
marvellous is this appreciation, so mathe- 
matically certain, so profoundly inscribed 
in their memory, that if, after five months' 
hibernation in some obscure cellar, the 
hive, when replaced on the platform, 
should be set a little to right or to left of 
its former position, all the workers, on 
their return from the earliest flowers, will 
infallibly steer their direct and unwavering 

16 241 



The Life of the Bee 

course to the precise spot that it filled 
the previous year ; and only after some 
hesitation and groping will they discover 
the door which stands not now where it 
once had stood. It is as though space 
had preciously preserved, the whole 
winter through, the indelible track of 
their flight : as though the print of their 
tiny, laborious footsteps, still lay graven 
in the sky. 

If the hive be displaced, therefore, 
many bees will lose their way ; except 
in the case of their having been carried 
far from their former home, and finding 
the country completely transformed that 
they had grown to know perfectly within 
a radius of two or three miles ; for 
then, if care be taken to warn them, 
by means of a little gangway connecting 
with the alighting-board, at the entrance 
to the hive, that some change has 
occurred, they will at once proceed to 
242 



The Young Queens 

seek new bearings and create fresh land- 
marks. 

[67] 

And now let us return to the city that 
is being repeopled, where myriad cradles 
are incessantly opening, and the solid walls 
even appear to be moving. But this city 
still lacks a queen. Seven or eight curi- 
ous structures arise from the centre of one 
of the combs, and remind us, scattered as 
they are over the surface of the ordinary 
cells, of the circles and protuberances that 
appear so strange on the photographs of 
the moon. They are a species of capsule, 
contrived of wrinkled wax or of inclined 
glands, hermetically sealed, which fills the 
place of three or four workers' cells. As 
a rule, they are grouped around the same 
point ; and a numerous guard keep watch, 
with singular vigilance and restlessness, 
over this region that seems instinct with 
243 



The Life of the Bee 

an indescribable prestige. It is here that 
the mothers are formed. In each one of 
these capsules, before the swarm departs, 
an egg will be placed by the mother, or 
more probably — though as to this we 
have no certain knowledge — by one of 
the workers ; an egg that she will have 
taken from some neighbouring cell, and 
that is absolutely identical with those from 
which workers are hatched. 

From this egg, after three days, a small 
larva will issue, and receive a special and 
very abundant nourishment ; and hence- 
forth we are able to follow, step by step, 
the movements of one of those magnifi- 
cently vulgar methods of nature on which, 
were we dealing with men, we should 
bestow the august name of fatality. The 
little larva, thanks to this regimen, as- 
sumes an exceptional development ; and 
in its ideas, no less than in its body, there 
ensues so considerable a change that the 
244 



The Young Queens 

bee to which it will give birth might 
almost belong to an entirely different race 
of insects. 

Four or five years will be the period of 
her life, instead of the six or seven weeks 
of the ordinary worker. Her abdomen 
will be twice as long, her colour more 
golden, and clearer; her sting will be 
curved, and her eyes have seven or eight 
thousand facets instead of twelve or thir- 
teen thousand. Her brain will be smaller, 
but she will possess enormous ovaries, 
and a special organ besides, the sperma- 
theca, that will render her almost an 
hermaphrodite. None of the instincts 
will be hers that belong to a life of toil ; 
she will have no brushes, no pockets 
wherein to secrete the wax, no baskets to 
gather the pollen. The habits, the pas- 
sions, that we regard as inherent in the 
bee, will all be lacking in her. She will 
not crave for air, or the light of the sun ; 
245 



The Life of the Bee 

she will die without even once having 
tasted a flower. Her existence will pass 
in the shadow, in the midst of a restless 
throng ; her sole occupation the indefat- 
igable search for cradles that she must 
fill. On the other hand she alone will 
know the disquiet of love. Not even 
twice, it may be, in her life shall she look 
on the light — for the departure of the 
swarm is by no means inevitable ; on one 
occasion only, perhaps, will she make use 
of her wings, but then it will be to fly to 
her lover. It is strange to see so many 
things — organs, ideas, desires, habits, an 
entire destiny — depending, not on a 
germ, which were the ordinary miracle of 
the plant, the animal, and man, but on 
a curious inert substance : a drop of 
honey. 1 

1 It is generally admitted to-day that workers and 
queens, after the hatching of the egg, receive the same 
nourishment, — a kind of milk, very rich in nitrogen 
246 



The Young Queens 

[68] 

About a week has passed since the 
departure of the old queen. The royal 
nymphs asleep in the capsules are not all 
of the same age, for it is to the interest 
of the bees that the births should be 
nicely gradationed, and take place at 
regular intervals, in accordance with their 
possible desire for a second swarm, a 
third, or even a fourth. The workers 
have for some hours now been actively 
thinning the walls of the ripest cell, while 
the young queen, from within, has been 
simultaneously gnawing the rounded lid 
of her prison. And at last her head 
appears ; she thrusts herself forward ; 

that a special gland in the nurses' head secretes. But 
after a few days the worker larvae are weaned, and put 
on a coarser diet of honey and pollen ; whereas the 
future queen, until she be fully developed, is copiously 
fed on the precious milk known as " royal jelly." 
247 



The Life of the Bee 

and, with the help of the guardians who 
hasten eagerly to her, who brush her, 
caress her, and clean her, she extricates 
herself altogether and takes her first steps 
on the comb. At the moment of birth 
she too, like the workers, is trembling 
and pale, but after ten minutes or so her 
legs become stronger, and a strange rest- 
lessness seizes her ; she feels that she is 
not alone, that her kingdom has yet to 
be conquered, that close by pretenders 
are hiding; and she eagerly paces the 
waxen walls in search of her rivals. But 
there intervene here the mysterious deci- 
sions and wisdom of instinct, of the spirit 
of the hive, or of the assembly of work- 
ers. The most surprising feature of all, 
as we watch these things happening be- 
fore us in a hive of glass, is the entire 
absence of hesitation, of the slightest 
division of opinion. There is not a trace 
of discussion or discord. The atmosphere 
246 



The Young Queens 

of the city is one of absolute unanimity^ 
preordained, which reigns over all ; and 
every one of the bees would appear to 
know in advance the thought of her 
sisters. And yet this moment is the 
gravest, the most vital, in their entire 
history. They have to choose between 
three or four courses whose results, in the 
distant future, will be totally different, 
which, too, the slightest accident may 
render disastrous. They have to rec- 
oncile the multiplication of species — 
which is their passion, or innate duty — 
with the preservation of the hive and 
its people. They will err at times ; 
they will successively send forth three or 
four swarms, thereby completely denuding 
the mother-city ; and these swarms, toe- 
feeble to organise, will succumb, it may 
be, at the approach of winter, caught un- 
awares by this climate of ours, which i* 
different far from their original climate, that 
249 



The Life of the Bee 

the bees, notwithstanding all, have never 
forgotten. In such cases they suffer from 
what is known as " swarming fever ; " 
a condition wherein life, as in ordinary- 
fever, reacting too ardently on itself, 
passes its aim, completes the circle, and 
discovers only death. 

[6 9 ] 

Of all the decisions before them there 
is none that would seem imperative ; nor 
can man, if content to play the part of 
spectator only, foretell in the slightest 
degree which one the bees will adopt. 
But that the most careful deliberation 
governs their choice is proved by the 
fact that we are able to influence, or even 
determine it, by for instance reducing or 
enlarging the space we accord them ; or 
by removing combs full of honey, and 
setting up, in their stead, empty combs 
which are well supplied with workers' cells. 
250 



The Young Queens 

The question they have to consider is 
not whether a second or third swarm 
shall be immediately launched, — for in 
arriving at such a decision they would 
merely be blindly and thoughtlessly 
yielding to the caprice or temptation of a 
favourable moment, — but the instanta- 
neous, unanimous adoption of measures 
that shall enable them to issue a second 
swarm or "cast" three or four days after 
the birth of the first queen, and a third 
swarm three days after the departure of 
the second, with this first queen at their 
head. It must be admitted, therefore, 
that we discover here a perfectly reasoned 
system, and a mature combination of plans 
extending over a period considerable in- 
deed when compared with the brevity of 
the bee's existence. 



251 



The Life of the Bee 

[70] 

These measures concern the care of the 
youthful queens who still lie immured in 
their waxen prisons. Let us assume that 
the " spirit of the hive " has pronounced 
against the despatch of a second swarm. 
Two courses still remain open. The 
bees may permit the first-born of the 
royal virgins, the one whose birth we have 
witnessed, to destroy her sister-enemies ; 
or they may elect to wait till she have 
performed the perilous ceremony known 
as the " nuptial flight," whereon the 
nation's future depends. The immediate 
massacre will be authorised often, and 
often denied ; but in the latter case it is 
of course not easy for us to pronounce 
whether the bees' decision be due to a de- 
sire for a second swarm, or to their recog- 
nition of the dangers attending the nuptial 
flight ; for it will happen at times that, on 
252 



The Young Queens 

account of the weather unexpectedly be- 
coming less favourable, or for some other 
reason we cannot divine, they will suddenly 
change their mind, renounce the cast that 
they had decreed, and destroy the royal 
progeny they had so carefully preserved. 
But at present we will suppose that they 
have determined to dispense with a second 
swarm, and that they accept the risks 
of the nuptial flight. Our young queen 
hastens towards the large cradles, urged 
on by her great desire, and the guard 
make way before her. Listening only to 
her furious jealousy, she will fling herself 
on to the first cell she comes across, 
madly strip off the wax with her teeth 
and claws, tear away the cocoon that car- 
pets the cell, and divest the sleeping 
princess of every covering. If her rival 
should be already recognisable, the queen 
will turn so that her sting may enter the 
capsule, and will frantically stab it with 
253 



The Life of the Bee 

her venomous weapon until the victim 
perish. She then becomes calmer, ap- 
peased by the death that puts a term to 
the hatred of every creature ; she with- 
draws her sting, hurries to the adjoining 
cell, attacks it and opens it, passing it 
by should she find in it only an im- 
perfect larva or nymph ; nor does she 
pause till, at last, exhausted and breath- 
less, her claws and teeth glide harmless 
over the waxen walls. 

The bees that surround her have calmly 
watched her fury, have stood by, inac- 
tive, moving only to leave her path clear; 
but no sooner has a cell been pierced 
and laid waste than they eagerly flock 
to it, drag out the corpse of the rav- 
ished nymph, or the still living larva, 
and thrust it forth from the hive, there- 
upon gorging themselves with the pre- 
cious royal jelly that adheres to the sides 
of the ceil. And finally, when the queen 
254 



The Young Queens 

has become too weak to persist in her 
passion, they will themselves complete the 
massacre of the innocents ; and the sover- 
eign race, and their dwellings, will all 
disappear. 

This is the terrible hour of the hive ; 
the only occasion, with that of the more 
justifiable execution of the drones, when 
the workers suffer discord and death to be 
busy amongst them ; and here, as often in 
nature, it is the favoured of love who 
attract to themselves the most extraor- 
dinary shafts of violent death. 

It will happen at times that two queens 
will be hatched simultaneously, the occur- 
rence being rare, however, for the bees 
take special care to prevent it. But when- 
ever this does take place, the deadly com- 
bat will begin the moment they emerge 
from their cradles ; and of this combat 
Huber was the first to remark an extraor- 
dinary feature. Each time, it would seem 
*55 



The Life of the Bee 

that the queens, in their passes, present 
their chitrinous cuirasses to each other in 
such a fashion that the drawing of the 
sting would prove mutually fatal ; one 
might almost believe that, even as a god 
or goddess was wont to interpose in the 
combats of the Iliad, so a god or a god- 
dess, the divinity of the race, perhaps, 
interposes here ; and the two warriors, 
stricken with simultaneous terror, divide 
and fly, to meet shortly after and separate 
again should the double disaster once more 
menace the future of their people ; till at 
last one of them shall succeed in surprising 
her clumsier or less wary rival, and in 
killing her without risk to herself. For 
the law of the race has called for one 
sacrifice only. 

[71] 

The cradles having thus been destroyed 
and the rivals all slain, the young queen r 
216 



The Young Queens 

accepted by her people ; but she will net 
truly reign over them, or be treated as was 
her mother before her, until the nuptial 
flight be accomplished; for until she be 
impregnated the bees will hold her but 
lightly, and render most passing homage. 
Her history, however, will rarely be as un- 
eventful as this, for the bees will not often 
renounce their desire for a second swarm. 
In that case, as before, quick with the 
same desires, the queen will approach the 
royal cells ; but instead of meeting with 
docile servants who second her efforts, 
she will find her path blocked by a 
numerous and hostile guard. In her fury, 
and urged on by her fixed idea, she will 
endeavour to force her way through, or to 
outflank them ; but everywhere sentinels 
are posted to protect the sleeping prin- 
cesses. She persists, she returns to the 
charge, to be repulsed with ever increasing 
severity, to be somewhat roughly handled 
17 257 



The Life of the Bee 

even, until at last she begins vaguely 
to understand that these little inflexible 
workers stand for a law before which that 
law must bend whereby she is inspired. 

And at last she goes, and wanders from 
comb to comb, her unsatisfied wrath find- 
ing vent in a war-song, or angry complaint, 
that every bee-keeper knows ; resembling 
somewhat the note of a distant trumpet 
of silver; so intense, in its passionate 
feebleness, as to be clearly audible, in the 
evening especially, two or three yards 
from the double walls of the most carefully 
enclosed hive. 

Upon the workers this royal cry has a 
magical effect. It terrifies them, it in- 
duces a kind of respectful stupor; and 
when the queen sends it forth, as she 
halts in front of the cells whose approach 
is denied her, the guardians who have but 
this moment been hustling her, pushing 
her back, will at once desist, and wait, 
258 



1 



The Young Queens 

with bent head, till the cry shall have 
ceased to resound. Indeed, some believe 
that it is thanks to the prestige of this 
cry, which the Sphinx Atropos imitates, 
that the latter is able to enter the hive, 
and gorge itself with honey, without the 
least molestation on the part of the bees. 

For two or three days, sometimes even 
for five, this indignant lament will be 
heard, this challenge that the queen ad- 
dresses to her well protected rivals. And 
as these in their turn develop, in their turn 
grow anxious to see the light, they too set 
to work to gnaw the lids of their cells. 
A mighty disorder would now appear to 
threaten the republic. But the genius of 
the hive, at the time that it formed its 
decision, was able to foretell every conse- 
quence that might ensue ; and the guar- 
dians have had their instructions : they 
know exactly what must be done, hour by 
hour, to meet the attacks of a foiled in^ 
'59 



The Life of the Bee 

stinct, and conduct two opposite forces to 
a successful issue. They are fully aware 
that if the young queens should escape who 
now clamour for birth, they would fall into 
the hands of their elder sister, by this time 
irresistible, who would destroy them one by 
one. The workers, therefore, will pile on 
fresh layers of wax in proportion as the 
prisoner reduces, from within, the walls of 
her tower ; and the impatient princess will 
ardently persist in her labour, little sus- 
pecting that she has to deal with an en- 
chanted obstacle, that rises ever afresh 
from its ruin. She hears the war-cry of 
her rival ; and already aware of her royal 
duty and destiny, although she has not 
yet looked upon life, nor knows what a 
hive may be, she answers the challenge 
from within the depths of her prison. 
But her cry is different ; it is stifled and 
hollow, for it has to traverse the walls of 
a tomb ; and, when night is falling, and 
260 



The Young Queens 

noises are hushed, and high over all there 
reigns the silence of the stars, the apiarist 
who nears these marvellous cities and 
stands, questioning, at their entrance, 
recognises and understands the dialogue 
that is passing between the wandering 
queen and the virgins in prison. 

c 72 ] 

To the young princesses, however, this 
prolonged reclusion is of material benefit ; 
for when they at last are freed they have 
grown mature and vigorous, and are able 
to fly. But during this period of waiting 
the strength of the first queen has also 
increased, and is sufficient now to enable 
her to face the perils of the voyage. The 
time has arrived, therefore, for the depar- 
ture of the second swarm, or " cast," with 
the first-born of the queens at its head. 
No sooner has she gone than the workers 
left in the hive will set one of the prisoners 
261 



The Life of the Bee 

free ; and she will evince the same murder- 
ous desires, send forth the same cries of 
anger, until, at last, after three or four 
days, she will leave the hive in her turn, 
at the head of the tertiary swarm ; and so 
in succession, in the case of " swarming 
fever," till the mother-city shall be com- 
pletely exhausted. 

Swammerdam cites a hive that, through 
its swarms and the swarms of its swarms, 
was able in a single season to found no 
less than thirty colonies. 

Such extraordinary multiplication is 
above all noticeable after disastrous win- 
ters ; and one might almost believe that 
the bees, forever in touch with the secret 
desires of nature, are conscious of the 
dangers that menace their race. But at 
ordinary times this fever will rarely occur 
in a strong and well-governed hive. 
There are many that swarm only once; 
and some, indeed, not at all. 
262 



The Young Queens 

After the second swarm the bees, as a 
rule, will renounce further division, owing 
either to their having observed the exces- 
sive feebleness of their own stock, or to 
the prudence urged upon them by threaten- 
ing skies. In that case they will allow 
the third queen to slaughter the captives ; 
ordinary life will at once be resumed, and 
pursued with the more ardour for the 
reason that the workers are all very young, 
that the hive is depopulated and impover- 
ished, and that there are great voids to 
fill before the arrival of winter. 

[ 73 ] 

The departure of the second and third 
swarms resembles that of the first, and the 
conditions are identical, with the exception 
that the bees are fewer in number, less 
circumspect, and lacking in scouts ; and 
also that the young and virgin queen, 
being unencumbered and ardent, will fly 
263 



The Life of the Bee 

much further, and in the first stage lead 
the swarm to a considerable distance from 
the hive. The conduct of these second 
and third migrations will be far more rash, 
and their future more problematical. The 
queen at their head, the representative of 
the future, has not yet been impregnated. 
Their entire destiny depends on the ensu- 
ing nuptial flight. A passing bird, a few 
drops of rain, a mistake, a cold wind — 
any one of these may give rise to irreme- 
diable disaster. Of this the bees are so 
well aware that when the young queen 
sallies forth in quest of her lover, they 
often will abandon the labours they have 
begun, will forsake the home of a day that 
already is dear to them, and accompany 
her in a body, dreading to let her pass 
out of their sight, eager, as they form 
closely around her, and shelter her be 
neath their myriad devoted wings, to los* 
themselves with her, should love causs 
264 



The Young Queens 

her to stray so far from the hive that the 
as yet unfamiliar road of return shall grow 
blurred and hesitating in every memory. 

[74] 

But so potent is the law of the future 
that none of these uncertainties, these 
perils of death, will cause a single bee 
to waver. The enthusiasm displayed by 
the second and third swarms is not less 
than that of the first. No sooner has 
the mother-city pronounced its decision 
than a battalion of workers will flock 
around each dangerous young queen, 
eager to follow her fortunes, to accom- 
pany her on the voyage where there is 
so much to lose, and so little to gain 
beyond the desire of a satisfied instinct. 
Whence do they derive the energy we 
ourselves never possess, whereby they 
break with the past as though with an 
enemy? Who is it selects from the 
265 



The Life of the Bee 

crowd those who shall go forth, and de- 
clares who shall remain ? No special 
class divides those who stay from those 
who wander abroad ; it will be the 
younger here and the elder there ; around 
each queen who shall never return vete- 
ran foragers jostle tiny workers, who 
for the first time shall face the dizziness 
of the blue. Nor is the proportionate 
strength of a swarm controlled by chance 
or accident, by the momentary dejection 
or transport of an instinct, thought, or 
feeling. I have more than once tried 
to establish a relation between the num- 
ber of bees composing a swarm and the 
number of those that remain ; and al- 
though the difficulties of this calculation 
are such as to preclude anything ap- 
proaching mathematical precision, I have 
at least been able to gather that this 
relation — if we take into account the 
brood-cells, or in other words the forth- 
266 



The Young Queens 

coming births — is sufficiently constant 
to point to an actual and mysterious 
reckoning on the part of the genius of 
the hive. 

[75] 

We will not follow these swarms on 
their numerous, and often most compli- 
cated, adventures. Two swarms, at times, 
will join forces ; at others, two or three 
of the imprisoned queens will profit by 
the confusion attending the moment of 
departure to elude the watchfulness of 
their guardians and join the groups that 
are forming. Occasionally, too, one of 
the young queens, finding herself sur- 
rounded by males, will cause herself to 
be impregnated in the swarming flight, 
and will then drag all her people to an 
extraordinary height and distance. In 
the practice of apiculture these secondary 
and tertiary swarms are always returned 
267 



The Life of the Bee 

to the mother-hive. The queens will 
meet on the comb ; the workers will 
gather around and watch their combat; 
and, when the stronger has overcome 
the weaker they will then, in their ardour 
for work and hatred of disorder, expel 
the corpses, close the door on the vio- 
lence of the future, forget the past, return 
to their cells, and resume their peaceful 
path to the flowers that await them. 

[76] 

We will now, in order to simplify 
matters, return to the queen whom the 
bees have permitted to slaughter her 
sisters, and resume the account of her 
adventures. As I have already stated, 
this massacre will be often prevented, and 
often sanctioned, at times even when the 
bees apparently do not intend to issue a 
second swarm ; for we notice the same 
diversity of political spirit in the diflfer- 
268 



The Young Queens 

ent hives of an apiary as in the different 
human nations of a continent. But it is 
clear that the bees will act imprudently 
in giving their consent ; for if the queen 
should die, or stray in the nuptial flight, 
it will be impossible to fill her place, 
the workers' larvae having passed the 
age when they are susceptible of royal 
transformation. Let us assume, how- 
ever, that the imprudence has been 
committed ; and behold our first-born, 
therefore, unique sovereign, and recog- 
nised as such in the spirit of her people. 
But she is still a virgin. To become as 
was the mother before her, it is essential 
that she should meet the male within the 
first twenty days of her life. Should the 
event for some reason be delayed beyond 
this period, her virginity becomes irrevo- 
cable. And yet we have seen that she is 
not sterile, virgin though she be. There 
confronts us here the great mystery — or 
269 



The Life of the Bee 

precaution — of Nature, that is known 
as parthenogenesis, and is common to a 
certain number of insects, such as the 
aphides, the lepidoptera of the Psyche 
genus, the hymenoptera of the Cynipede 
family, etc. The virgin queen is able to 
lay ; but from all the eggs that she will 
deposit in the cells, be these large or 
small, there will issue males alone ; and 
as these never work, as they live at the 
expense of the females, as they never go 
foraging except on their own account, 
and are generally incapable of providing 
for their subsistence, the result will be, 
at the end of some weeks, that the last 
exhausted worker will perish, and the 
colony be ruined and totally annihilated. 
The queen, we have said, will produce 
thousands of drones ; and each of these 
will possess millions of the spermatozoa 
whereof it is impossible that a single one 
can have penetrated into the organism of 
270 






The Young Queens 

the mother. That may not be more as- 
tounding, perhaps, than a thousand other 
and analogous phenomena; and, indeed, 
when we consider these problems, and 
more especially those of generation, the 
marvellous and the unexpected confront 
us so constantly — occurring far more fre- 
quently, and above all in far less human 
fashion, than in the most miraculous fairy 
stories — that after a time astonishment 
becomes so habitual with us that we almost 
cease to wonder. The fact, however, is 
sufficiently curious to be worthy of notice. 
But, on the other hand, how shall we 
explain to ourselves the aim that nature 
can have in thus favouring the valueless 
drones at the cost of the workers who are 
so essential ? Is she afraid lest the fe- 
males might perhaps be induced by their 
intellect unduly to limit the number of 
their parasites, which, destructive though 
thev be, are still necessary for the preser- 
271 



The Life of the Bee 

vation of the race? Or is it merely an 
exaggerated reaction against the misfor- 
tune of the unfruitful queen ? Can we 
have here one of those blind and extreme 
precautions which, ignoring the cause of 
the evil, overstep the remedy ; and, in 
the endeavour to prevent an unfortunate 
accident, bring about a catastrophe? In 
reality — though we must not forget that 
the natural, primitive reality is different 
from that of the present, for in the origi- 
nal forest the colonies might well be far 
more scattered than they are to-day — 
in reality the queen's unfruitfulness will 
rarely be due to the want of males, for 
these are very numerous always, and will 
flock from afar ; but rather to the rain, or 
the cold, that will have kept her too long 
in the hive, and more frequently still to the 
imperfect state of her wings, whereby she 
will be prevented from describing the high 
flight in the air that the organ of the male 
iH2 



The Young Queens 

demands. Nature, however, heedless of 
these more intrinsic causes, is so deeply 
concerned with the multiplication of 
males, that we sometimes find, in mother- 
less hives, two or three workers possessed 
of so great a desire to preserve the race 
that, their atrophied ovaries notwithstand- 
ing, they wiir still endeavour to lay ; and, 
their organs expanding somewhat beneath 
the empire of this exasperated sentiment, 
they will succeed in depositing a few eggs 
in the cells ; but from these eggs, as from 
those of the virgin mother, there will 
issue only males. 

[77] 

Here we behold the active intervention 
of a superior though perhaps imprudent 
will, which offers irresistible obstruction 
to the intelligent will of a life. In the 
insect world such interventions are com- 
paratively frequent, and much can be 
18 273 



The Life of the Bee 

gained from their study ; for this world 
being more densely peopled and more 
complex than others, certain special desires 
of nature are often more palpably revealed 
to us there ; and she may even at times 
be detected in the midst of experiments 
we might almost be warranted in regard- 
ing as incomplete. She has one great and 
general desire, for instance, that she dis- 
plays on all sides ; the amelioration of 
each species through the triumph of the 
stronger. This struggle, as a rule, is 
most carefully organised. The hecatomb 
of the weak is enormous, but that matters 
little so long as the victors' reward be 
effectual and certain. But there are cases 
when one might almost imagine that na- 
ture had not had time enough to disen- 
tangle her combinations ; cases where 
reward is impossible, and the fate of the 
victor no less disastrous than that of the 
vanquished. And of such, selecting an 
274 



The Young Queens 

instance that will not take us too far from 
our bees, I know of no instance more 
striking than that of the triongulins of the 
Sitaris colletes. And it will be seen that, 
in many details, this story is less foreign 
to the history of man than might perhaps 
be imagined. 

These triongulins are the primary larvae 
of a parasite proper to a wild, obtuse- 
tongued, solitary bee, the Colletes, which 
builds its nest in subterranean galleries. 
It is their habit to lie in wait for the bee 
at the approach to these galleries ; and 
then, to the number of three, four, five, 
or often of more, they will leap on her 
back, and bury themselves in her hair. 
Were the struggle of the weak against the 
strong to take place at this moment there 
would be no more to be said, and all would 
pass in accordance with universal law. 
But, for a reason we know not, their in- 
stinct requires, and nature has consequently 
3 75,. 



The Life of the Bee 

ordained, that they should hold them- 
selves tranquil so long as they remain on 
the back of the bee. They patiently bide 
their time while she visits the flowers, and 
constructs and provisions her cells. But 
no sooner has an egg been laid than they 
all spring upon it ; and the innocent col- 
letes carefully seals down her cell, which 
she has duly supplied with food, never 
suspecting that she has at the same time 
ensured the death of her offspring. 

The cell has scarcely been closed when 
the triongulins grouped round the egg 
engage in the inevitable and salutary com- 
bat of natural selection. The stronger, 
more agile, will seize its adversary be- 
neath the cuirass, and, raising it aloft, will 
maintain it for hours in its mandibles until 
the victim expire. But, while this fight 
is in progress, another of the triongulins, 
that had either no rival to meet, or already 
has conquered, takes possession of the 
276 



The Young Queens 

egg and bursts it open. The ultimate 
victor has therefore this fresh enemy to 
subdue ; but the conquest is easy, for the 
triongulin, deep in the satisfaction of its 
pre-natal hunger, clings obstinately to the 
Ggg y and does not even attempt to defend 
itself. It is quickly despatched ; and the 
other is at last alone, and possessor of 
the precious egg it has won so well. It 
eagerly plunges its head into the opening 
its predecessor had made ; and begins the 
lengthy repast that shall transform it into 
a perfect insect. But nature, that has 
decreed this ordeal of battle, has, on the 
other hand, established the prize of vic- 
tory with such miserly precision that 
nothing short of an entire egg will suffice 
for the nourishment of a single triongulin, 
So that, as we are informed by M. Mayetj 
to whom we owe the account of these dis- 
concerting adventures, there is lacking to 
our conaueror the food its last victim con- 
i 77 



The Life of the Bee 

sumed before death ; and incapable there- 
fore of achieving the first stage of its 
transformation, it dies in its turn, adher- 
ing to the skin of the egg, or adding itself, 
in the sugary liquid, to the number of 
the drowned. 

[78] 

This case, though rarely to be followed 
so closely, is not unique in natural history. 
We have here, laid bare before us, the 
struggle between the conscious will of the 
triongulin, that seeks to live, and the 
obscure and general will of nature, that 
not only desires that the triongulin should 
live, but is anxious even that its life should 
be improved, and fortified, to a degree 
beyond that to which its own will impels 
it. But, through some strange inadver- 
tence, the amelioration nature imposes sup- 
presses the life of even the fittest, and the 
Sitaris Colletes would have long since dis- 
278 



The Young Queens 

appeared had not chance, acting in oppo- 
sition to the desires of nature, permitted 
isolated individuals to escape from the 
excellent and far-seeing law that ordains 
on all sides the triumph of the stronger. 

Can this mighty power err, then, that 
seems unconscious to us, but necessarily- 
wise, seeing that the life she organises and 
maintains is forever proving her to be 
right ? Can feebleness at times overcome 
that supreme reason, which we are apt to 
invoke when we have attained the limits 
of our own ? And if that be so, by whom 
shall this feebleness be set right ? 

But let us return to that special form 
of her resistless intervention that we find 
in parthenogenesis. And we shall do 
well to remember that, remote as the 
world may seem in which these problem^ 
confront us, they do indeed yet concern 
ourselves very nearly. Who would dare; 
to affirm that no interventions take place 
*7* 



The Life of the Bee 

in the sphere of man — interventions that 
may be more hidden, but not the less 
fraught with danger? And in the case 
before us, which is right, in the end, — the 
insect, or nature ? What would happen 
if the bees, more docile perhaps, or 
endowed with a higher intelligence, were 
too clearly to understand the desires of 
nature, and to follow them to the extreme ; 
to multiply males to infinity, seeing that 
nature is imperiously calling for males ? 
Would they not risk the destruction of 
their species ? Are we to believe that 
there are intentions in nature that it is 
dangerous to understand too clearly, fatal 
to follow with too much ardour ; and that 
it is one of her desires that we should not 
divine, and follow, all her desires ? Is it 
not possible that herein there may lie one 
of the perils of the human race ? We too 
are aware of unconscious forces within us, 
that would appear to demand the reverse 
280 



The Young Queens 

of what our intellect urges. And this 
intellect of ours, that, as a rule, its own 
boundary reached, knows not whither to 
go — can it be well that it should join 
itself to these forces, and add to them its 
unexpected weight? 

[79] 

Have we the right to conclude, from 
the dangers of parthenogenesis, that nature 
is not always able to proportion the means 
to the end ; and that what she intends to 
preserve is preserved at times by means of 
precautions she has to contrive against her 
own precautions, and often through foreign 
circumstances she has not herself foreseen ? 
But is there anything she does foresee, 
anything she does intend to preserve ? 
Nature, some may say, is a word where- 
with we clothe the unknowable ; and few 
things authorise our crediting it with 
intelligence, or with aim. That is true. 
281 



The Life of the Bee 

We touch here the hermetically sealed 
rases that furnish our conception of the 
universe. Reluctant, over and over 
again, to label these with the inscription 
" UNKNOWN," that disheartens us and 
compels us to silence, we engrave upon 
them, in the degree of their size and 
grandeur, the words cc Nature, life, death, 
infinite, selection, spirit of the race," and 
many others, even as those who went 
before us affixed the words " God, Provi- 
dence, destiny, reward," etc. Let it be 
so, if one will, and no more. But, though 
the contents of the vases remain obscure, 
there is gain at least in the fact that the 
inscriptions to-day convey less menace to 
us, that we are able therefore to approach 
them and touch them, and lay our ears 
close to them and listen, with wholesome 
curiosity. 

But whatever the name we attach to 
these vases, it is certain that one of them, 
282 



The Young Queens 

at least, and the greatest — that which 
bears on its flank the name " Nature " — 
encloses a very real force, the most real 
of all, and one that is able to preserve an 
enormous and marvellous quantity and 
quality of life on our globe, by means so 
skilful that they surpass all that the genius 
of man could contrive. Could this quan- 
tity and quality be maintained by other 
means ? Is it we who deceive ourselves 
when we imagine that we see precautions 
where perhaps there is truly no more than 
a fortunate chance, that has survived a 
million unfortunate chances ? 

[so] 

That may be ; but these fortunate 
chances teach us a lesson in admiration 
as valuable as those we might learn in re- 
gions superior to chance. If we let our 
gaze travel beyond the creatures that are 
possessed of a glimmer of intellect and 
283 



The Life of the Bee 

consciousness, beyond the protozoa even, 
which are the first nebulous representatives 
of the dawning animal kingdom, we find, 
as has been abundantly proved by the ex- 
periments of Mr. H. J. Carter, the cele- 
brated microscopist, that the very lowest 
embryos, such as the myxomycetes, mani- 
fest a will and desires and preferences ; 
and that infusoria, which apparently have 
no organism whatever, give evidence of a 
certain cunning. The Amoebae, for in- 
stance, will patiently lie in wait for the 
new-born Acinetes, as they leave the ma- 
ternal ovary ; being aware that these must 
as yet be lacking their poisonous tentacles. 
Now, the Amcebse have neither a nervous 
system nor distinguishable organs of any 
kind. Or if we turn to the plants, which, 
being motionless, would seem exposed to 
every fatality, — without pausing to con- 
sider carnivorous species like the Drusera, 
which really act as animals, — we are struck 
284 



The Young Queens 

by the genius that some of our humblest 
flowers display in contriving that the visit 
of the bee shall infallibly procure them 
the crossed fertilisation they need. See 
the marvellous fashion in which the Or- 
chis Moris, our humble country orchid, 
combines the play of its rostellum and 
retinacula ; observe the mathematical and 
automatic inclination and adhesion of its 
pollinia ; as also the unerring double see- 
saw of the anthers of the wild sage, which 
touch the body of the visiting insect at a 
particular spot in order that the insect 
may, in its turn, touch the stigma of the 
neighbouring flower at another particular 
spot; watch, too, in the case of the Pedi- 
cularis Sylvatica, the successive, calculated 
movements of its stigma; and indeed the 
entrance of the bee into any one of these 
three flowers sets every organ vibrating, 
just as the skilful marksman who hits the 
black spot on the target will cause all the 
285 



The Life of the Bee 

figures to move in the elaborate mechan- 
isms we see in our village fairs. 

We might go lower still, and show, as 
Ruskin has shown in his " Ethics of the 
Dust/' the character, habits, and artifices 
of crystals ; their quarrels, and mode of 
procedure, when a foreign body attempts 
to oppose their plans, which are more 
ancient by far than our imagination can 
conceive ; the manner in which they ad- 
mit or repel an enemy, the possible vic- 
tory of the weaker over the stronger, as, 
for instance, when the all-powerful quartz 
submits to the humble and wily epidote, 
and allows this last to conquer it; the 
struggle, terrible sometimes and some- 
times magnificent, between the rock-crystal 
and iron ; the regular, immaculate expan- 
sion and uncompromising purity of one 
hyaline block, which rejects whatever is 
foul, and the sickly growth, the evident 
immorality, of its brother, which admits 
286 



The Young Queens 

corruption, and writhes miserably in the 
void ; as we might quote also the strange 
phenomena of crystalline cicatrisation and 
reintegration mentioned by Claude Ber- 
nard, etc. But the mystery here becomes 
too foreign to us. Let us keep to our 
flowers, which are the last expression of a 
life that has yet some kinship with our 
own. We are not dealing now with ani- 
mals or insects, to which we attribute a 
special, intelligent will, thanks to which 
they survive. We believe, rightly or 
wrongly, that the flowers possess no such 
will ; at least we cannot discover in them 
the slightest trace of the organs wherein 
will, intellect, and initiative of action, are 
usually born and reside. It follows, 
therefore, that all that acts in them in so 
admirable a fashion must directly proceed 
from what we elsewhere call nature. We 
are no longer concerned with the intellect 
of the individual ; here we find the un- 
287 



The Life of the Bee 

conscious, undivided force in the act of 
ensnaring other forms of itself. Shall we 
on that account refuse to believe that 
these snares are pure accidents, occurring 
in accordance with a routine that is also 
incidental ? We are not yet entitled to 
such a deduction. It might be urged 
that these flowers, had these miraculous 
combinations not been, would not have 
survived, but would have had their place 
filled by others that stood in no need of 
crossed fertilisation ; and the non-exist- 
ence of the first would have been per- 
ceived by none, nor would the life that 
vibrates on the earth have seemed less in- 
comprehensible to us, less diverse, or less 
astounding. 

And yet it would be difficult not to ad- 
mit that acts which bear all the appearance 
cf acts of intelligence and prudence pro- 
duce and support these fortunate chances. 
Whence do they issue, — from the being 
288 



The Young Queens 

itself, or from the force whence that being 
draws life ? I will not say " it matters but 
little," for, on the contrary, to know the 
answer were of supreme importance to us. 
But, in the meantime, and till we shall learn 
whether it be the flower that endeavours 
to maintain and perfect the life that nature 
has placed within it, or whether it be na- 
ture that puts forth an effort to maintain 
and improve the degree of existence the 
flower has assumed, or finally whether it 
be chance that ultimately governs chance, 
a multitude of semblances invite us to 
believe that something equal to our lof- 
tiest thoughts issues at times from a com- 
mon source, that we are compelled to 
admire without knowing where it resides. 

There are moments when what seems 
error to us comes forth from this com- 
mon source. But, although we know 
very few things, proofs abound that the 
seeming error was in reality an act of 
19 • 280 



The Life of the Bee 

prudence that we at first could not grasp. 
In the little circle, even, that our eyes 
embrace we are constantly shown that 
what we regarded as nature's blunder 
close by was due to her deeming it 
well to adjust the presumed inadvertence 
out yonder. She has placed the three 
flowers we mentioned under conditions 
of such difficulty that they are unable to 
fertilise themselves ; she considers it ben- 
eficial, therefore, for reasons beyond our 
powers of perception, that they should 
cause themselves to be fertilised by their 
neighbours ; and, inasmuch as she en- 
hances the intelligence of her victims, she 
displays on our right the genius she failed 
to display on our left. The byways of 
this genius of hers remain incomprehen- 
sible to us, but its level is always the 
same. It will appear to fall into error — 
assuming that error be possible — there- 
upon rising again at once in the organ 
290 



The Young Queens 

charged to repair this error. Turn where 
we may, it towers high over our heads. 
It is the circular ocean, the tideless water, 
whereon our boldest and most independ- 
ent thoughts will never be more than 
mere abject bubbles. We call it Nature 
to-day ; to-morrow, perhaps, we shall give 
it another name, softer or more alarming. 
In the meanwhile it holds simultaneous, 
impartial sway over life and death ; fur- 
nishing the two irreconcilable sisters with 
the magnificent and familiar weapons that 
adorn and distract its bosom. 

[81 ] 

Does this force take measures to main- 
tain what may be struggling on its sur- 
face, or must we say, arguing in the 
strangest of circles, that what floats on 
its surface must guard itself against the 
genius that has given it life ? That ques- 
tion must be left open. We have no 
291 



The Life of the Bee 

means of ascertaining whether it be not- 
withstanding the efforts of the superior 
will, or independently of these, or lastly 
because of these, that a species has been 
able to survive. 

All we can say is that such a species 
exists, and that, on this point, therefore, 
nature would seem to be right. But who 
shall tell us how many others that we 
have not known have fallen victim to her 
restless and forgetful intellect ? Beyond 
this, we can recognise only the surprising 
and occasionally hostile forms that the 
extraordinary fluid we call life assumes, 
in utter unconsciousness sometimes, at 
others with a kind of consciousness : the 
fluid which animates us equally with all 
the rest, which produces the very thoughts 
that judge it, and the feeble voice that 
attempts to tell its story. 



392 



VI 

THE NUPTIAL FLIGHT 



293 



VI 
THE NUPTIAL FLIGHT 

[82] 

WE will now consider the manner in 
which the impregnation of the 
queen-bee comes to pass. Here again na- 
ture has taken extraordinary measures to 
favour the union of males with females 
of a different stock ; a strange law, whereto 
nothing would seem to compel her ; a 
caprice, or initial inadvertence, perhaps, 
whose reparation calls for the most mar- 
vellous forces her activity knows. 

If she had devoted half the genius she 
lavishes on crossed fertilisation and other 
arbitrary desires to making life more cer- 
tain, to alleviating pain, to softening death 
and warding off horrible accidents, the 
2 95 



The Life of the Bee 

universe would probably have presented 
an enigma less incomprehensible, less 
pitiable, than the one we are striving to 
solve. But our consciousness, and the 
interest we take in existence, must grap- 
ple, not with what might have been, but 
with what is. 

Around the virgin queen, and dwelling 
with her in the hive, are hundreds of ex- 
uberant males, forever drunk on honey ; 
the sole reason for their existence being 
one act of love. But, notwithstanding 
the incessant contact of two desires that 
elsewhere invariably triumph over every 
obstacle, the union never takes place in 
the hive, nor has it been possible to bring 
about the impregnation of a captive queen. 1 

1 Professor McLain has recently succeeded in caus- 
ing a few queens to be artificially impregnated ; but 
this has been the result of a veritable surgical opera- 
tion, of the most delicate and complicated nature. 
Moreover, the fertility of the queens was restricted 
and ephemeral. 

296 



The Nuptial Flight 

While she lives in their midst the lovers 
about her know not what she is. They 
seek her in space, in the remote depths of 
the horizon, never suspecting that they have 
but this moment quitted her, have shared 
the same comb with her, have brushed 
against her, perhaps, in the eagerness of 
their departure. One might almost be- 
lieve that those wonderful eyes of theirs, 
that cover their head as though with a 
glittering helmet, do not recognise or de- 
sire her save when she soars in the blue. 
Each day, from noon till three, when the 
sun shines resplendent, this plumed horde 
sallies forth in search of the bride, who is 
indeed more royal, more difficult of con- 
quest, than the most inaccessible princess 
of fairy legend ; for twenty or thirty tribes 
will hasten from all the neighbouring cities, 
her court thus consisting of more than 
ten thousand suitors ; and from these ten 
thousand one alone will be chosen for the 
297 



The Life of the Bee 

unique kiss of an instant that shall wed 
him to death no less than to happiness ; 
while the others will fly helplessly round 
the intertwined pair, and soon will perish 
without ever again beholding this prodi- 
gious and fatal apparition. 

[83] 

I am not exaggerating this wild ana 
amazing prodigality of nature. The best- 
conducted hives will, as a rule, contain 
four to five hundred males. Weaker or 
degenerate ones will often have as many 
as four or five, thousand ; for the more a 
hive inclines to its ruin, the more males 
will it produce. It may be said that, on 
an average, an apiary composed of ten 
colonies will at a given moment send an 
army of ten thousand males into the air, 
of whom ten or Mtten at most will have 
the occasion of performing the one act 
for which they were born. 
298 



The Nuptial Flight 

In the meanwhile they exhaust the sup- 
plies of the city ; each one of the parasites 
requiring the unceasing labour of five or 
six workers to maintain it in its abound- 
ing and voracious idleness, its activity 
being indeed solely confined to its jaws. 
But nature is always magnificent when 
dealing with the privileges and preroga- 
tives of love. She becomes miserly only 
when doling out the organs and instru- 
ments of labour. She is especially severe 
on what men have termed virtue, whereas 
she strews the path of the most unin- 
teresting lovers with innumerable jewels 
and favours. " Unite and multiply ; 
there is no other law, or aim, than love/' 
would seem to be her constant cry on 
all sides, while she mutters to herself, 
perhaps : " and exist afterwards if you 
can ; that is no concern of mine." Do 
or desire what else we may, we find, 
everywhere on our road, this morality 
299 



The Life of the Bee 

that differs so much from our own. 
And note, too, in these same little crea- 
tures, her unjust avarice and insensate 
waste. From her birth to her death, 
the austere forager has to travel abroad 
in search of the myriad flowers that 
hide in the depths of the thickets. She 
has to discover the honey and pollen 
that lurk in the labyrinths of the nectaries 
and in the most secret recesses of the 
anthers. And yet her eyes and olfactory 
organs are like the eyes and organs of 
the infirm, compared with those of the 
male. Were the drones almost blind, had 
they only the most rudimentary sense of 
smell, they scarcely would suffer. They 
have nothing to do, no prey to hunt 
down ; their food is brought to them 
ready prepared, and their existence is spent 
in the obscurity of the hive, lapping honey 
from the comb. But they are the agents 
of love ; and the most enormous, most use- 
300 



The Nuptial Flight 

less gifts are flung with both hands into the 
abyss of the future. Out of a thousand 
of them, one only, once in his life, will 
have to seek, in the depths of the azure, 
the presence of the royal virgin. Out of 
a thousand one only will have, for one in- 
stant, to follow in space the female who 
desires not to escape. That suffices. The 
partial power flings open her treasury, 
wildly, even deliriously. To every one 
of these unlikely lovers, of whom nine 
hundred and ninety-nine will be put to 
death a few days after the fatal nuptials 
of the thousandth, she has given thirteen 
thousand eyes on each side of their head, 
while the worker has only six thousand. 
According to Cheshire's calculations, she 
has provided each of their antennae with 
thirty-seven thousand eight hundred olfac- 
tory cavities, while the worker has only 
five thousand in both. There we have 
an instance of the almost universal dis- 
3©i 



The Life of the Bee 

proportion that exists between the gifts 
she rains upon love and her niggardly- 
doles to labour ; between the favours she 
accords to what shall, in an ecstasy, create 
new life, and the indifference wherewith 
she regards what will patiently have to 
maintain itself by toil. Whoever would 
seek faithfully to depict the character of 
nature, in accordance with the traits we 
discover here, would design an extraor- 
dinary figure, very foreign to our ideal, 
which nevertheless can only emanate from 
her. But too many things are unknown 
to man for him to essay such a portrait, 
wherein all would be deep shadow save 
one or two points of flickering light. 

[84] 

Very few, I imagine, have profaned the 

secret of the queen-bee's wedding, which 

comes to pass in the infinite, radiant 

circles of a beautiful sky. But we are 

302 



The Nuptial Flight 

able to witness the hesitating departure 
of the bride-elect and the murderous re- 
turn of the bride. 

However great her impatience, she will 
yet choose her day and her hour, and 
linger in the shadow of the portal till a 
marvellous morning fling open wide the 
nuptial spaces in the depths of the great 
azure vault. She loves the moment when 
drops of dew still moisten the leaves 
and the flowers, when the last fragrance 
of dying dawn still wrestles with burning 
day, like a maiden caught in the arms 
of a heavy warrior; when through the 
silence of approaching noon is heard, once 
and again, a transparent cry that has lin- 
gered from sunrise. 

Then she appears on the threshold — 
in the midst of indifferent foragers, if sh< 
have left sisters in the hive ; or sur- 
rounded by a delirious throng of workers v 
should it be impossible to fill her place, 
303 



The Life of the Bee 

She starts her flight backwards ; returns 
twice or thrice to the alighting-board ; and 
then, having definitely fixed in her mind 
the exact situation and aspect of the king- 
dom she has never yet seen from without, 
she departs like an arrow to the zenith of 
the blue. She soars to a height, a lumi- 
nous zone, that other bees attain at no 
period of their life. Far away, caressing 
their idleness in the midst of the flowers, 
the males have beheld the apparition, 
have breathed the magnetic perfume that 
spreads from group to group till every 
apiary near is instinct with it. Immedi- 
ately crowds collect, and follow her into 
the sea of gladness, whose limpid bounda- 
ries ever recede. She, drunk with her 
wings, obeying the magnificent law of the 
race that chooses her lover, and enacts 
that the strongest alone shall attain her in 
the solitude of the ether, she rises still ; 
and, for the first time in her life, the blue 
304 



The Nuptial Flight 

morning air rushes into her stigmata, 
singing its song, like the blood of heaven, 
in the myriad tubes of the tracheal sacs, 
nourished on space, that fill the centre of 
her body. She rises still. A region 
must be found unhaunted by birds, that 
else might profane the mystery. She 
rises still ; and already the ill-assorted 
troop below are dwindling and falling 
asunder. The feeble, infirm, the aged, 
unwelcome, ill-fed, who have flown from 
inactive or impoverished cities, these re- 
nounce the pursuit and disappear in the 
void. Only a small, indefatigable cluster 
remain, suspended in infinite opal. She 
summons her wings for one final effort ; 
and now the chosen of incomprehensible 
forces has reached her, has seized her, and 
bounding aloft with united impetus, the 
ascending spiral of their intertwined flight 
whirls for one second in the hostile mad- 
ness of love. 

30 3°5 



The Life of the Bee 

[85] 

Most creatures have a vague belief that 
a very precarious hazard, a kind of trans- 
parent membrane, divides death from 
love ; and that the profound idea of 
nature demands that the giver of life 
should die at the moment of giving. 
Here this idea, whose memory lingers still 
over the kisses of man, is realised in its 
primal simplicity. No sooner has the 
union been accomplished than the male's 
abdomen opens, the organ detaches itself, 
dragging with it the mass of the entrails ; 
the wings relax, and, as though struck by 
lightning, the emptied body turns and 
turns on itself and sinks down into the 
abyss. 

The same idea that, before, in partheno- 
genesis, sacrificed the future of the hive to 
the unwonted multiplication of males, now 
sacrifices the male to the future of the hive. 
306 



The Nuptial Flight 

This idea is always astounding; and 
the further we penetrate into it, the fewer 
do our certitudes become. Darwin, for 
instance, to take the man of all men 
who studied it the most methodically 
and most passionately, Darwin, though 
scarcely confessing it to himself, loses 
confidence at every step, and retreats be- 
fore the unexpected and the irreconcilable. 
Would you have before you the nobly 
humiliating spectacle of human genius 
battling with infinite power, you have but 
to follow Darwin's endeavours to unravel 
the strange, incoherent, inconceivably 
mysterious laws of the sterility and 
fecundity of hybrids, or of the varia- 
tions of specific and generic characters. 
Scarcely has he formulated a principle 
when numberless exceptions assail him ; 
and this very principle, soon completely 
overwhelmed, is glad to find refuge in 
gome corner, and preserve a shred of 
307 



The Life of the Bee 

existence there under the title of an 
exception. 

For the fact is that in hybridity, in 
variability (notably in the simultaneous 
variations known as correlations of growth), 
in instinct, in the processes of vital com- 
petition, in geologic succession and the 
geographic distribution of organised be- 
ings, in mutual affinities, as indeed in 
every other direction, the idea of nature 
reveals itself, in one and the same phe- 
nomenon and at the very same time, as 
circumspect and shiftless, niggard and 
prodigal, prudent and careless, fickle and 
stable, agitated and immovable, one 
and innumerable, magnificent and squalid. 
There lay open before her the immense 
and virgin fields of simplicity ; she chose 
to people them with trivial errors, with 
petty contradictory laws that stray through 
existence like a flock of blind sheep. It 
is true that our eye, before which these 
308 



The Nuptial Flight 

things happen, can only reflect a reality 
proportionate to our needs and our stat- 
ure; nor have we any warrant for believ- 
ing that nature ever loses sight of her 
wandering results and causes. 

In any event she will rarely permit 
them to stray too far, or approach illogi- 
cal or dangerous regions. She disposes 
of two forces that never can err; and 
when the phenomenon shall have tres- 
passed beyond certain limits, she will 
beckon to life or to death — which ar- 
rives, re-establishes order, and unconcern- 
edly marks out the path afresh. 

[86] 

She eludes us on every side ; she re- 
pudiates most of our rules and breaks 
our standards to pieces. On our right 
she sinks far beneath the level of our 
thoughts, on our left she towers moun- 
tain-high above them. She appears to 
3°9 



The Life of the Bee 

be constantly blundering, no less in the 
world of her first experiments than in that 
of her last, of man. There she invests 
with her sanction the instincts of the ob- 
scure mass, the unconscious injustice of 
the multitude, the defeat of intelligence 
and virtue, the uninspired morality which 
urges on the great wave of the race, 
though manifestly inferior to the morality 
that could be conceived or desired by 
the minds composing the small and the 
clearer wave that ascends the other. And 
yet, can such a mind be wrong if it ask 
itself whether the whole truth — moral 
truths, therefore, as well as non-moral — 
had not better be sought in this chaos 
than in itself, where these truths would 
seem comparatively clear and precise ? 

The man who feels thus will never 

attempt to deny the reason or virtue of 

his ideal, hallowed by so many heroes 

and sages ; but there are times when he 

310 



The Nuptial Flight 

will whisper to himself that this ideal 
has perhaps been formed at too great a 
distance from the enormous mass whose 
diverse beauty it would fain represent. 
He has, hitherto, legitimately feared that 
the attempt to adapt his morality to that 
of nature would risk the destruction of 
what was her masterpiece. But to-day 
he understands her a little better ; and 
from some of her replies, which, though 
still vague, reveal an unexpected breadth, 
he has been enabled to seize a glimpse of 
a plan and an intellect vaster than could 
be conceived by his unaided imagination ; 
wherefore he has grown less afraid, nor 
feels any longer the same imperious need 
of the refuge his own special virtue and 
reason afford him. He concludes that 
what is so great could surely teach noth- 
ing that would tend to lessen itself. He 
wonders whether the moment may not 
have arrived for submitting to a more 
3*' 



The Life of the Bee 

judicious examination his convictions, his 
principles, and his dreams. 

Once more, he has not the slightest de- 
sire to abandon his human ideal. That 
even which at first diverts him from this 
ideal teaches him to return to it. f It 
were impossible for nature to give ill 
advice to a man who declines to include 
in the great scheme he is endeavouring 
to grasp, who declines to regard as suffi- 
ciently lofty to be definitive, any truth 
that is not at least as lofty as the truth he 
himself desires. Nothing shifts its place 
in his life save only to rise with him ; 
and he knows he is rising when he finds 
himself drawing near to his ancient image 
of good. But all things transform them- 
selves more freely in his thoughts ; and 
he can descend with impunity, for he has 
the presentiment that numbers of succes- 
sive valleys will lead him to the plateau 
that he expects. And, while he thus 






The Nuptial Flight 

seeks for conviction, while his researches 
even conduct him to the very reverse of 
that which he loves, he directs his conduct 
by the most humanly beautiful truth, and 
clings to the one that provisionally seems 
to be highest. All that may add to 
beneficent virtue enters his heart at once ; 
all that would tend to lessen it remaining 
there in suspense, like insoluble salts that 
change not till the hour for decisive ex- 
periment. He may accept an inferior 
truth, but before he will act in accord- 
ance therewith he will wait, if need be for 
centuries, until he perceive the connection 
this truth must possess with truths so 
infinite as to include and surpass all 
others. 

In a word, he divides the moral from 
the intellectual order, admitting in the for- 
mer that only which is greater and more 
beautiful than was there before. And 
blameworthy as it may be to separate the 
3*3 



The Life of the Bee 

two orders in cases, only too frequent in 
life, where we suffer our conduct to be in- 
ferior to our thoughts, where, seeing the 
good, we follow the worse — to see the 
worse and follow the better, to raise our 
actions high over our idea, must ever be 
reasonable and salutary ; for human ex- 
perience renders it daily more clear that 
the highest thought we can attain will long 
be inferior still to the mysterious truth we 
seek. Moreover, should nothing of what 
goes before be true, a reason more simple 
and more familiar would counsel him not 
yet to abandon his human ideal. For the 
more strength he accords to the laws which 
would seem to set egoism, injustice, and 
cruelty as examples for men to follow, the 
more strength does he at the same time 
confer on the others that ordain generosity, 
justice, and pity ; and these last laws are 
found to contain something as profoundly 
natural as the first, the moment he begins 
3i4 



The Nuptial Flight 

to equalise, or allot more methodically, 
the share he attributes to the universe 
and to himself. 

Let us return to the tragic nuptials of 
the queen. Here it is evidently nature's 
wish, in the interests of crossed fertilisa- 
tion, that the union of the drone and the 
queen-bee should be possible only in the 
open sky. But her desires blend network- 
fashion, and her most valued laws have to 
pass through the meshes of other laws, 
which, in their turn, the moment after, are 
compelled to pass through the first. 

In the sky she has planted so many 
dangers — cold winds, storm-currents, 
birds, insects, drops of water, all of which 
also obey invincible laws — that she must 
of necessity arrange for this union to be 
as brief as possible. It is so, thanks to 
the startlingly sudden death of the male. 
315 



The Life of the Bee 

One embrace suffices ; the rest all enacts 
itself in the very flanks of the bride. 

She descends from the azure heights 
and returns to the hive, trailing behind 
her, like an oriflamme, the unfolded entrails 
of her lover. Some writers pretend that 
the bees manifest great joy at this return 
so big with promise — Biichner, among 
others, giving a detailed account of it. I 
have many a time lain in wait for the 
queen-bee's return, and I confess that I 
have never noticed any unusual emotion 
except in the case of a young queen who 
had gone forth at the head of a swarm, 
and represented the unique hope of a 
newly founded and still empty city. In 
that instance the workers were all wildly 
excited, and rushed to meet her. But as 
a rule they appear -to forget her, even 
though the future of their city will often be 
no less imperilled. They act with con- 
sistent prudence in all things, till the 
316 



The Nuptial Flight 

moment when they authorise the massacre 
of the rival queens. That point reached, 
their instinct halts ; and there is, as it 
were, a gap in their foresight. — They 
appear to be wholly indifferent. They 
raise their heads ; recognise, probably, the 
murderous tokens of impregnation ; but, 
still mistrustful, manifest none of the glad- 
ness our expectation had pictured. Being 
positive in their ways, and slow at illusion, 
they probably need further proofs before 
permitting themselves to rejoice. Why 
endeavour to render too logical, or too 
human, the feelings of little creatures so 
different from ourselves ? Neither among 
the bees nor among any other animals 
that have a ray of our intellect, do things 
happen with the precision our books re- 
cord. Too many circumstances remain 
unknown to us. Why try to depict the 
bees as more perfect than they are, by 
saying that which is not ? Those who 
3*7 



The Life of the Bee 

would deem them more interesting did 
they resemble ourselves, have not yet 
truly realised what it is that should awaken 
the interest of a sincere mind. The aim 
of the observer is not to surprise, but to 
comprehend; and to point out the gaps 
existing in an intellect, and the signs of a 
cerebral organisation different from our 
own, is more curious by far than the re- 
lating of mere marvels concerning it. 

But this indifference is not shared by 
all ; and when the breathless queen has 
reached the alighting-board, some groups 
will form and accompany her into the 
hive ; where the sun, hero of every fes- 
tivity in which the bees take part, is enter- 
ing with little timid steps, and bathing in 
azure and shadow the waxen walls and 
curtains of honey. Nor does the new 
bride, indeed, show more concern than 
her people, there being not room for many 
emotions in her narrow, barbarous, prac- 
318 



The Nuptial Flight 

tical brain. She has but one thought, 
which is to rid herself as quickly as pos- 
sible of the embarrassing souvenirs her 
consort has left her, whereby her move- 
ments are hampered. She seats herself 
on the threshold, and carefully strips off 
the useless organs, that are borne far away 
by the workers ; for the male has given 
her all he possessed, and much more than 
she requires. She retains only, in her 
spermatheca, the seminal liquid where 
millions of germs are floating, which, un- 
til her last day, will issue one by one, as 
the eggs pass by, and in the obscurity of 
her body accomplish the mysterious union 
of the male and female element, whence 
the worker-bees are born. Through a 
curious inversion, it is she who furnishes 
the male principle, and the drone who 
provides the female. Two days after the 
union she lays her first eggs, and her 
people immediately surround her with the 
3*9 



The Life of the Bee 

most particular care. From that moment, 
possessed of a dual sex, having within her 
an inexhaustible male, she begins her veri- 
table life ; she will never again leave the 
hive, unless to accompany a swarm ; and 
her fecundity will cease only at the ap- 
proach of death. 

[88] 

Prodigious nuptials these, the most 
fairylike that can be conceived, azure and 
tragic, raised high above life by the im- 
petus of desire ; imperishable and terrible, 
unique and bewildering, solitary and infi- 
nite. An admirable ecstasy, wherein 
death supervening in all that our sphere 
has of most limpid and loveliest, in vir- 
ginal, limitless space, stamps the instant 
of happiness in the sublime transparence 
of the great sky ; purifying in that im- 
maculate light the something of wretched- 
ness that always hovers around love, 
320 



The Nuptial Flight 

rendering the kiss one that can never be 
forgotten ; and, content this time with 
moderate tithe, proceeding herself, with 
hands that are almost maternal, to intro- 
duce and unite, in one body, for a long 
and inseparable future, two little fragile 
lives. 

Profound truth has not this poetry, but 
possesses another that we are less apt to 
grasp, which, however, we should end, 
perhaps, by understanding and loving. 
Nature has not gone out of her way to 
provide these two " abbreviated atoms," 
as Pascal would call them, with a resplen- 
dent marriage, or an ideal moment of love. 
Her concern, as we have said, was merely 
to improve the race by means of crossed 
fertilisation. To ensure this she has con- 
trived the organ of the male in such a 
fashion that he can make use of it only 
in space. A prolonged flight must first 
expand his two great tracheal sacs ; these 
*» 321 



The Life of the Bee 

enormous receptacles being gorged on air 
will throw back the lower part of the 
abdomen, and permit the exsertion of the 
organ. There we have the whole physio- 
logical secret — which will seem ordinary 
enough to some, and almost vulgar to 
others — of this dazzling pursuit and these 
magnificent nuptials. 

[8 9 ] 

" But must we always, then," the poet 
will wonder, cc rejoice in regions that are 
loftier than the truth ? " 

Yes, in all things, at all times, let 
us rejoice, not in regions loftier than the 
truth, for that were impossible, but in 
regions higher than the little truths that 
our eye can seize. Should a chance, a 
recollection, an illusion, a passion, — in a 
word, should any motive whatever cause 
an object to reveal itself to us in a more 
beautiful light than to others, let that 
322 






The Nuptial Flight 

motive be first of all dear to us. It may 
only be error, perhaps ; but this error 
will not prevent the moment wherein this 
object appears the most admirable to us 
from being the moment wherein we are 
likeliest to perceive its real beauty. The 
beauty we lend it directs our attention to 
its veritable beauty and grandeur, which, 
derived as they are from the relation 
wherein every object must of necessity 
stand to general, eternal, forces and laws, 
might otherwise escape observation. The 
faculty of admiring which an illusion may 
have created within us will serve for the 
truth that must come, be it sooner or 
later. It is with the words, the feelings, 
and ardour created by ancient and imagi- 
nary beauties, that humanity welcomes to- 
day truths which perhaps would have never 
been born, which might not have been 
able to find so propitious a home, had 
these sacrificed illusions not first of all 
323 



The Life of the Bee 

dwelt in, and kindled, the heart and the 
reason whereinto these truths should 
descend. Happy the eyes that need no 
illusion to see that the spectacle is great! 
It is illusion that teaches the others to 
look, to admire, and rejoice. And look 
as high as they will, they never can look 
too high. Truth rises as they draw 
nearer ; they draw nearer when they ad- 
mire. And whatever the heights may be 
whereon they rejoice, this rejoicing can 
never take place in the void, or above 
the unknown and eternal truth that rests 
over all things like beauty in suspense. 

[90] 

Does this mean that we should attach 
ourselves to falsehood, to an unreal and 
factitious poetry, and find our gladness 
therein for want of anything better? Or 
that in the example before us — in itself 
nothing, but we dwell on it because it 
3*4 



The Nuptial Flight 

stands for a thousand others, as also for 
our entire attitude in face of divers orders 
of truths — that here we should ignore 
the physiological explanation, and retain 
and taste only the emotions of this nuptial 
flight, which is yet, and whatever the cause, 
one of the most lyrical, most beautiful acts 
of that suddenly disinterested, irresistible 
force which all living creatures obey and 
are wont to call love? That were too 
childish ; nor is it possible, thanks to the 
excellent habits every loyal mind has to- 
day acquired. 

The fact being incontestable, we must 
evidently admit that the exsertion of the 
organ is rendered possible only by the 
expansion of the tracheal vesicles. But 
if we, content with this fact, did not let 
our eyes roam beyond it ; if we deduced 
therefrom that every thought that rises 
too high or wanders too far must be of 
necessity wrong, and that truth must be 
3 a 5 



The Life of the Bee 

looked for only in the material details ; 
if we did not seek, no matter where, in 
uncertainties often far greater than the 
one this little explanation has solved, in 
the strange mystery of crossed fertilisa- 
tion for instance, or in the perpetuity of 
the race and life, or in the scheme of 
nature ; if we did not seek in these for 
something beyond the current explana- 
tion, something that should prolong it, 
and conduct us to the beauty and gran- 
deur that repose in the unknown, I would 
almost venture to assert that we should 
pass our existence further away from the 
truth than those, even, who in this case 
wilfully shut their eyes to all save the 
poetic and wholly imaginary interpreta- 
tion of these marvellous nuptials. They 
evidently misjudge the form and colour 
of the truth, but they live in its atmo- 
sphere and its influence far more than 
the others, who complacently believe that 
326 



The Nuptial Flight 

the entire truth lies captive within their 
two hands. For the first have made 
ample preparations to receive the truth, 
have provided most hospitable lodging 
within them ; and even though their eyes 
may not see it, they are eagerly looking 
towards the beauty and grandeur where 
its residence surely must be. 

We know nothing of nature's aim, 
which for us is the truth that dominates 
every other. But for the very love of 
this truth, and to preserve in our soul the 
ardour we need for its search, it behoves 
us to deem it great. And if we should 
find one day that we have been on a 
wrong road, that this aim is incoherent 
and petty, we shall have discovered its 
pettiness by means of the very zeal its 
presumed grandeur had created within us ; 
and this pettiness once established, it will 
teach us what we have to do. In the mean- 
while it cannot be unwise to devote to its 
327 



The Life of the Bee 

search the most strenuous, daring efforts 
of our heart and our reason. And should 
the last word of all this be wretched, it will 
be no little achievement to have laid bare 
the inanity and the pettiness of the aim 
of nature. 

[91] 

" There is no truth for us yet," a great 
physiologist of our day remarked to me 
once, as I walked with him in the 
country ; " there is no truth yet, but 
there are everywhere three very good 
semblances of truth. Each man makes 
his own choice, or rather, perhaps, has it 
thrust upon him ; and this choice, whether 
it be thrust upon him, or whether, as is 
often the case, he have made it without 
due reflection, this choice, to which he 
clings, will determine the form and the 
conduct of all that enters within him. 
The friend whom we meet, the woman 
328 



The Nuptial Flight 

who approaches and smiles, the love tk^tt 
unlocks our heart, the death or sorrow 
that seals it, the September sky above us, 
this superb and delightful garden, wherein 
we see, as in Corneille's c Psyche/ bow- 
ers of greenery resting on gilded statues, 
and the flocks grazing yonder, with their 
shepherd asleep, and the last houses of 
the village, and the sea between the trees, 
— all these are raised or degraded before 
they enter within us, are adorned or de- 
spoiled, in accordance with the little signal 
this choice of ours makes to them. We 
must learn to select from among these 
semblances of truth. I have spent my 
own life in eager search for the smaller 
truths, the physical causes; and now, at 
the end of my days, I begin to cherish, 
not what would lead me from these, but 
what would precede them, and, above all, 
what would somewhat surpass them." 
We had attained the summit of a 
329 



The Life of the Bee 

plateau in the "pays de Caux," in Nor- 
mandy, which is supple as an English 
park, but natural and limitless. It is one 
of the rare spots on the globe where 
nature reveals herself to us unfailingly 
wholesome and green. A little further to 
the north the country is threatened with 
barrenness, a little further to the south, it 
is fatigued and scorched by the sun. At 
the end of a plain that ran down to the 
edge of the sea, some peasants were erect- 
ing a stack of corn. Cf Look," he said, 
"seen from here, they are beautiful. 
They are constructing that simple and 
yet so important thing, which is above 
all else the happy and almost unvarying 
monument of human life taking root — 
a stack of corn. The distance, the air of 
the evening, weave their joyous cries into 
a kind of song without words, which re- 
plies to the noble song of the leaves as 
they whisper over our heads. Above 
33° 



The Nuptial Flight 

them the sky is magnificent; and one 
almost might fancy that beneficent spirits, 
waving palm-trees of fire, had swept all 
the light towards the stack, to give the 
workers more time. And the track of 
the palms still remains in the sky. See 
the humble church by their side, over- 
looking and watching them, in the midst 
of the rounded lime trees and the grass of 
the homely graveyard, that faces its native 
ocean. They are fitly erecting their mon- 
ument of life underneath the monuments 
of their dead, who made the same gestures 
and still are with them. Take in the 
whole picture. There are no special, 
characteristic features, such as we find in 
England, Provence, or Holland. It is 
the presentment, large and ordinary 
enough to be symbolic, of a natural and 
happy life. Observe how rhythmic 
human existence becomes in its useful 
moments. Look at the man who is 
33i 



The Life of the Bee 

leading the horses, at that other who 
throws up the sheaves on his fork, at the 
ivomen bending over the corn, and the 
children at play. . . . They have not 
displaced a stone, or removed a spadeful 
of earth, to add to the beauty of the 
scenery ; nor do they take one step, plant 
a tree or a flower, that is not necessary. 
All that we see is merely the involuntary 
result of the effort that man puts forth to 
subsist for a moment in nature ; and yet 
those among us whose desire is only to 
create or imagine spectacles of peace, 
deep thoughtfulness, or beatitude, have 
been able to find no scene more perfect 
than this, which indeed they paint or 
describe whenever they seek to present 
us with a picture of beauty or happiness. 
Here we have the first semblance, which 
some will call the truth." 



332 



The Nuptial Flight 

[92] 

" Let us draw nearer. Can you distin 
guish the song that blended so well with 
the whispering of the leaves? It is 
made up of abuse and insult; and when 
laughter bursts forth, it is due to an ob- 
scene remark some man or woman has 
made, to a jest at the expense of the 
weaker, — of the hunchback unable to lift 
his load, the cripple they have knocked 
over, or the idiot whom they make their 
butt. 

" I have studied these people for many 
years. We are in Normandy ; the soil is 
rich and easily tilled. Around this stack 
of corn there is rather more comfort than 
one would usually associate with a scene 
of this kind. The result is that most 
of the men, and many of the women, are 
alcoholic. Another poison also, which 
I need not name, corrodes the race. To 
333 



The Life of the Bee 

that, to the alcohol, are due the children 
whom you see there : the dwarf, the one 
with the hare-lip, the others who are 
knock-kneed, scrofulous, imbecile. All 
of them, men and women, young and old, 
have the ordinary vices of the peasant. 
They are brutal, suspicious, grasping, and 
envious ; hypocrites, liars, and slanderers ; 
inclined to petty, illicit profits, mean in- 
terpretations, and coarse flattery of the 
stronger. Necessity brings them to- 
gether, and compels them to help each 
other ; but the secret wish of every indi- 
vidual is to harm his neighbour as soon 
as this can be done without danger to 
himself. The one substantial pleasure of 
the village is procured by the sorrows of 
others. Should a great disaster befall one 
of them, it will long be the subject of 
secret, delighted comment among the rest. 
Every man watches his fellow, is jealous 
of him, detests and despises him. While 
334 



The Nuptial Flight 

they are poor, they hate their masters 
with a boiling and pent-up hatred because 
of the harshness and avarice these last 
display ; should they in their turn have 
servants, they profit by their own experi- 
ence of servitude to reveal a harshness and 
avarice greater even than that from which 
they have suffered. I could give you 
minutest details of the meanness, deceit, 
injustice, tyranny, and malice that under- 
lie this picture of ethereal, peaceful toil. 
Do not imagine that the sight of this mar- 
vellous sky, of the sea which spreads out 
yonder behind the church and presents 
another, more sensitive sky, flowing over 
the earth like a great mirror of wisdom 
and consciousness — do not imagine that 
either sea or sky is capable of lifting their 
thoughts or widening their minds. They 
have never looked at them. Nothing has 
power to influence or move them save 
three or four circumscribed fears, that of 
33S 



The Life of the Bee 

hunger, of force, of opinion and law, and 
the terror of hell when they die. To 
show what they are, we should have to 
consider them one by one. See that tall 
fellow there on the right, who flings up 
such mighty sheaves. Last summer his 
friends broke his right arm in some tavern 
row. I reduced the fracture, which was a 
bad and compound one. I tended him 
for a long time, and gave him the where- 
withal to live till he should be able to get 
back to work. He came to me every 
day. He profited by this to spread the 
report in the village that he had discov- 
ered me in the arms of my sister-in-law, 
and that my mother drank. He is not 
vicious, he bears me no ill-will ; on the 
contrary, see what a broad, open smile 
spreads over his face as he sees me. It 
was not social animosity that induced him 
to slander me. The peasant values wealth 
far too much to hate the rich man. But 
33 6 



The Nuptial Flight 

I fancy my good corn-thrower there could 
not understand my tending him without 
any profit to myself. He was satisfied 
that there must be some underhand 
scheme, and he declined to be my dupe. 
More than one before him, richer or 
poorer, has acted in similar fashion, if not 
worse. It did not occur to him that he 
was lying when he spread those inventions 
abroad; he merely obeyed a confused 
command of the morality he saw about 
him. He yielded unconsciously, against 
his will, as it were, to the all-powerful de- 
sire of the general malevolence. . . . But 
why complete a picture with which all are 
familiar who have spent some years in the 
country ? Here we have the second sem- 
blance that some will call the real truth. 
It is the truth of practical life. It un- 
doubtedly is based on the most precise, 
the only, facts that one can observe and 
test." 

32 337 



The Life of the Bee 

" Let us sit on these sheaves," he con- 
tinued, " and look again. Let us reject 
not a single one of the little facts that 
build up the reality of which I have 
spoken. Let us permit them to depart 
of their own accord into space. They 
cumber the foreground, and yet we can- 
not but be aware of the existence behind 
them of a great and very curious force 
that sustains the .whole. Does it only 
sustain and not raise ? These men whom 
we see before us are at least no longer 
the ferocious animals of whom La 
Bruyere speaks, the wretches who talked 
in a kind of inarticulate voice, and 
withdrew at night to their dens, where 
they lived on black bread, water, and 
roots. 

"The race, you will tell me, is neither 
as strong nor as healthy. That may be ; 
338 



The Nuptial Flight 

alcohol and the other scourge are accidents 
that humanity has to surmount; ordeals, 
it may be, by which certain of our organs, 
those of the nerves, for instance, may 
benefit; for we invariably find that life 
profits by the ills that it overcomes. Be- 
sides, a mere trifle that we may discover 
to-morrow may render these poisons in- 
nocuous. These men have thoughts and 
feelings that those of whom La Bruyere 
speaks had not." cc I prefer the simple, 
naked animal to the odious half-animal," 
I murmured. cc You are thinking of the 
first semblance now," he replied, " the 
semblance dear to the poet, that we saw 
before ; let us not confuse it with the 
one we are now considering. These 
thoughts and feelings are petty, if you 
will, and vile; but what is petty and 
vile is still better than that which is 
not at all. Of these thoughts and feel- 
ings they avail themselves only to hurt 
339 



The Life of the Bee 

each other, and to persist in their pres- 
ent mediocrity ; but thus does it often 
happen in nature. The gifts she accords 
are employed for evil at first, for the ren- 
dering worse what she had apparently 
sought to improve ; but, from this evil, a 
certain good will always result in the end. 
Besides, I am by no means anxious to 
prove that there has been progress, which 
may be a very small thing or a very great 
thing, according to the place whence we 
regard it. It is a vast achievement, the 
surest ideal, perhaps, to render the condi- 
tion of men a little less servile, a little less 
painful ; but let the mind detach itself for 
an instant from material results, and the 
difference between the man who marches 
in the van of progress and the other 
who is blindly dragged at its tail ceases 
to be very considerable. Among these 
young rustics, whose mind is haunted 
only by formless ideas, there are many 
$40 



The Nuptial Flight 

who have in themselves the possibility of 
attaining, in a short space of time, the 
degree of consciousness that we both en- 
joy. One is often struck by the narrow- 
ness of the dividing line between what we 
regard as the unconsciousness of these 
people and the consciousness that to us 
is the highest of all 

" Besides, of what is this consciousnest 
composed, whereof we are so proud ? Of 
far more shadow than light, of far more 
acquired ignorance than knowledge ; of 
far more things whose comprehension, we 
are well aware, must ever elude us, than 
of things that we actually know. And 
yet in this consciousness lies all our dig- 
nity, our most veritable greatness ; it is 
probably the most surprising phenomenon 
this world contains. It is this which per 
mits us to raise our head before the un- 
known principle, and say to it : c What 
you are I know not; but there is some- 
34i 



The Life of the Bee 

thing within me that already enfolds you. 
You will destroy me, perhaps, but if your 
object be not to construct from my ruins 
an organism better than mine, you will 
prove yourself inferior to what I am ; and 
the silence that will follow the death of 
the race to which I belong will declare to 
you that you have been judged. And 
if you are not capable even of caring 
whether you be justly judged or not, of 
what value can your secret be ? It must 
be stupid or hideous. Chance has en- 
abled you to produce a creature that you 
yourself lacked the quality to produce, 
It is fortunate for him that a contrary 
chance should have permitted you to 
suppress him before he had fathomed 
the depths of your unconsciousness ; 
more fortunate still that he does not 
survive the infinite series of your awful 
experiments. He had nothing to do in 
a world where his intellect corresponded 
342 



The Nuptial Flight 

to no eternal intellect, where his desire 
for the better could attain no actual 
good.' 

cc Once more, for the spectacle to absorb 
us, there is no need of progress. The 
enigma suffices; and that enigma is as 
great, and shines as mysteriously, in the 
peasants as in ourselves. As we trace life 
back to its all-powerful principle, it con- 
fronts us on every side. To this principle 
each succeeding century has given a new 
name. Some of these names were clear 
and consoling. It was found, however, 
that consolation and clearness were alike 
illusory. But whether we call it God, 
Providence, Nature, chance, life, fatality, 
spirit, or matter, the mystery remains un- 
altered ; and from the experience of thou- 
sands of years we have learned nothing 
more than to give it a vaster name, one 
nearer to ourselves, more congruous with 
our expectation, with the unforeseen. 
343 



The Life of the Bee 

That is the name it bears to-day, where- 
fore it has never seemed greater. Here 
we have one of the numberless aspects 
of the third semblance, which also is 
truth." 



344 



VII 

THE MASSACRE OF THE 
MALES 



34S 



VII 

THE MASSACRE OF THE 
MALES 

[94] 

IF skies remain clear, the air warm, and 
pollen and nectar abound in the 
flowers, the workers, through a kind of 
forgetful indulgence, or over-scrupulous 
prudence perhaps, will for a short time 
longer endure the importunate, disastrous 
presence of the males. These comport 
themselves in the hive as did Penelope's 
suitors in the house of Ulysses. Indeli- 
cate and wasteful, sleek and corpulent, 
fully content with their idle existence as 
honorary lovers, they feast and carouse, 
throng the alleys, obstruct the passages, 
and hinder the work ; jostling and jos- 
347 



The Life of the Bee 

tied, fatuously pompous, swelled with 
foolish, good-natured contempt ; harbour- 
ing never a suspicion of the deep and 
calculating scorn wherewith the workers 
regard them, of the constantly growing 
hatred to which they give rise, or of the 
destiny that awaits them. For their 
pleasant slumbers they select the snuggest 
corners of the hive ; then, rising carelessly, 
they flock to the open cells where the 
honey smells sweetest, and soil with their 
excrements the combs they frequent. The 
patient workers, their eyes steadily fixed 
on the future, will silently set things 
right. From noon till three, when the 
purple country trembles in blissful lassi- 
tude beneath the invincible gaze of a 
July or August sun, the drones will ap- 
pear on the threshold. They have a 
helmet made of enormous black pearls, 
two lofty, quivering plumes, a doublet 
of iridescent, yellowish velvet, an heroic 
348 



The Massacre of the Males 

tuft, and a fourfold mantle, translucent 
and rigid. They create a prodigious 
stir, brush the sentry aside, overturn 
the cleaners, and collide with the for- 
agers as these return laden with their 
humble spoil. They have the busy 
air, the extravagant, contemptuous gait, 
of indispensable gods who should be sim- 
ultaneously venturing towards some des- 
tiny unknown to the vulgar. One by 
one they sail off into space, irresistible, 
glorious, and tranquilly make for the 
nearest flowers, where they sleep till the 
afternoon freshness awake them. Then, 
with the same majestic pomp, and still 
overflowing with magnificent schemes, 
they return to the hive, go straight to 
the cells, plunge their head to the neck 
in the vats of honey, and fill themselves 
tight as a drum to repair their exhausted 
strength ; whereupon, with heavy steps, 
they go forth to meet the good, dreamless 
349 



The Life of the Bee 

and careless slumber that shall fold them 
in its embrace till the time for the next 
repast. 

[95] 

But the patience of the bees is not 
equal to that of men. One morning 
the long-expected word of command goes 
through the hive ; and the peaceful work- 
ers turn into judges and executioners. 
Whence this word issues, we know not ; 
it would seem to emanate suddenly from 
the cold, deliberate indignation of the 
workers ; and no sooner has it been ut- 
tered than every heart throbs with it, 
inspired with the genius of the unanimous 
republic. One part of the people re- 
nounce their foraging duties to devote 
themselves to the work of justice. The 
great idle drones, asleep in unconscious 
groups on the melliferous walk, are rudely 
torn from their slumbers by an army 
35° 



The Massacre of the Males 

of wrathful virgins. They wake, in 
pious wonder; they cannot believe their 
eyes ; and their astonishment struggles 
through their sloth as a moonbeam 
through marshy water. They stare 
amazedly round them, convinced that 
they must be victims of some mistake ; 
and the mother-idea of their life being 
first to assert itself in their dull brain, 
they take a step towards the vats of 
honey to seek comfort there. But ended 
for them are the days of May honey, the 
wine-flower of lime trees and fragrant am- 
brosia of thyme and sage, of marjoram 
and white clover. Where the path once 
lay open to the kindly, abundant reser- 
voirs, that so invitingly offered their 
waxen and sugary mouths, there stands 
now a burning-bush all alive with poi- 
sonous, bristling stings. The atmosphere 
of the city is changed ; in lieu of the 
friendly perfume of honey, the acrid odour 
35 * 



The Life of the Bee 

of poison prevails ; thousands of tiny 
drops glisten at the end of the stings, 
and diffuse rancour and hatred. Before 
the bewildered parasites are able to realise 
that the happy laws of the city have crum- 
bled, dragging down in most inconceivable 
fashion their own plentiful destiny, each 
one is assailed by three or four envoys 
of justice ; and these vigorously proceed 
to cut off his wings, saw through the peti- 
ole that connects the abdomen with the 
thorax, amputate the feverish antennae, 
and seek an opening between the rings 
of his cuirass through which to pass their 
sword. No defence is attempted by the 
enormous, but unarmed, creatures ; they 
try to escape, or oppose their mere bulk 
to the blows that rain down upon them. 
Forced on to their back, with their re- 
lentless enemies clinging doggedly to 
them, they will use their powerful claws 
to shift them from side to side ; or, turn- 
352 



The Massacre of the Males 

ing on themselves, they will drag the 
whole group round and round in wild 
circles, which exhaustion soon brings to 
an end. And, in a very brief space, their 
appearance becomes so deplorable that 
pity, never far from justice in the depths 
of our heart, quickly returns, and would 
seek forgiveness, though vainly, of the 
stern workers who recognise only nature's 
harsh and profound laws. The wings of 
the wretched creatures are torn, their 
antennae bitten, the segments of their legs 
wrenched off ; and their magnificent eyes, 
mirrors once of the exuberant flowers, 
flashing back the blue light and the inno- 
cent pride of summer, now, softened by 
suffering, reflect only the anguish and 
distress of their end. Some succumb to 
their wounds, and are at once borne away 
to distant cemeteries by two or three of 
their executioners. Others, whose injuries 
are less, succeed in sheltering themselves 
2 3 353 



The Life of the Bee 

in some corner, where they lie, all huddled 
together, surrounded by an inexorable 
guard, until they perish of want. Many 
will reach the door, and escape into space 
dragging their adversaries with them ; 
but, towards evening, impelled by hunger 
and cold, they return in crowds to the 
entrance of the hive to beg for shelter. 
But there they encounter another piti- 
less guard. The next morning, before 
setting forth on their journey, the work- 
ers will clear the threshold, strewn with 
the corpses of the useless giants ; and 
all recollection of the idle race disappear 
till the following spring. 

[96] 

In very many colonies of the apiary 
this massacre will often take place on the 
same day. The richest, best-governed 
hive will give the signal ; to be fol- 
lowed, some days after, by the little 
3S4 



The Massacre of the Males 

and less prosperous republics. Only the 
poorest, weakest colonies — those whose 
mother is very old and almost sterile — 
will preserve their males till the approach 
of winter, so as not to abandon the hope 
of procuring the impregnation of the 
virgin queen they await, and who may 
yet be born. Inevitable misery follows ; 
and all the tribe — mother, parasites, 
workers — collect in a hungry and closely 
intertwined group, who perish in silence 
before the first snows arrive, in the ob- 
scurity of the hive. 

In the wealthy and populous cities 
work is resumed after the execution of 
the drones, — although with diminishing 
zeal, for flowers are becoming scarce. 
The great festivals, the great dramas, are 
over. The autumn honey, however, that 
shall complete the indispensable provp 
sions, is accumulating within the hospi- 
table walls ; and the last reservoirs are 
355 



The Life of the Bee 

sealed with the seal of white, incorrupti- 
ble wax. Building ceases, births diminish, 
deaths multiply ; the nights lengthen, and 
days grow shorter. Rain and inclement 
winds, the mists of the morning, the am- 
bushes laid by a hastening twilight, carry 
off hundreds of workers who never re- 
turn ; and soon, over the whole little 
people, that are as eager for sunshine as 
the grasshoppers of Attica, there hangs 
the cold menace of winter. 

Man has already taken his share of the 
harvest. Every good hive has presented 
him with eighty or a hundred pounds of 
honey ; the most remarkable will some- 
times even give two hundred, which rep- 
resent an enormous expanse of liquefied 
light, immense fields of flowers that 
have been visited daily one or two thou- 
sand times. He throws a last glance 
over the colonies, which are becoming 
torpid. From the richest he takes their 
356 



The Massacre of the Males 

superfluous wealth to distribute it among 
those whom misfortune, unmerited always 
in this laborious world, may have ren- 
dered necessitous. He covers the dwell- 
ings, half closes the doors, removes the 
useless frames, and leaves the bees to 
their long winter sleep. They gather 
in the centre of the hive, contract them- 
selves, and cling to the combs that con- 
tain the faithful urns ; whence there shall 
issue, during days of frost, the transmuted 
substance of summer. The queen is in 
the midst of them, surrounded by her 
guard. The first row of the workers 
attach themselves to the sealed cells ; a 
second row cover the first, a third the 
second, and so in succession to the last 
row of all, which form the envelope. 
When the bees of this envelope feel the 
cold stealing over them, they re-enter 
the mass, and others take their place. 
The suspended cluster is like a sombre 
3sr 



The Life of the Bee 

sphere that the walls of the comb di- 
vide ; it rises imperceptibly and falls, 
it advances or retires, in proportion as 
the cells grow empty to which it clings. 
For, contrary to what is generally believed, 
the winter life of the bee is not arrested, 
although it be slackened. By the con- 
certed beating of their wings — little 
sisters that have survived the flames of 
the sun — which go quickly or slowly 
in accordance as the temperature without 
may vary, they maintain in their sphere 
an unvarying warmth, equal to that of 
a day in spring. This secret spring 
comes from the beautiful honey, itself but 
a ray of heat transformed, that returns 
now to its first condition. It circulates 
in the hive like generous blood. The 
bees at the full cells present it to their 
neighbours, who pass it on in their turn. 
Thus it goes from hand to hand and from 
mouth to mouth, till it attain the extrem- 
33S 



The Massacre of the Males 

ity of the group in whose thousands of 
hearts one destiny, one thought, is scat- 
tered and united. It stands in lieu of the 
sun and the flowers, till its elder brother, 
the veritable sun of the real, great spring, 
peering through the half-open door, glides 
in his first softened glances, wherein 
anemones and violets are coming to life 
again ; and gently awakens the workers, 
showing them that the sky once more is 
blue in the world, and that the uninter- 
rupted circle that joins death to life has 
turned and begun afresh. 



359 



VIII 

THE PROGRESS OF THE RACE 



361 



VIII 
THE PROGRESS OF THE RACE 

[97] 

BEFORE closing this book — as we 
have closed the hive on the torpid 
silence of winter — I am anxious to meet 
the objection invariably urged by those 
to whom we reveal the astounding indus- 
try and policy of the bees. Yes, they 
will say, that is all very wonderful ; but 
then, it has never been otherwise. The 
bees have for thousands of years dwelt 
under remarkable laws, but during those 
thousands of years the laws have not 
varied. For thousands of years they 
have constructed their marvellous combs, 
whereto we can add nothing, wherefrom 
we can take nothing, — combs that unite 
363 



The Life of the Bee 

in equal perfection the science of the 
chemist, the geometrician, the architect, 
and the engineer ; but on the sarcophagi, 
on Egyptian stones and papyri, we find 
drawings of combs that are identical in 
every particular. Name a single fact that 
will show the least progress, a single in- 
stance of their having contrived some 
new feature or modified their habitual 
routine, and we will cheerfully yield, and 
admit that they not only possess an ad- 
mirable instinct, but have also an intellect 
worthy to approach that of man, worthy 
to share in one knows not what higher 
destiny than awaits unconscious and sub- 
missive matter. 

This language is not even confined to 
the profane ; it is made use of by ento- 
mologists of the rank of Kirby and 
Spence, in order to deny the bees the 
possession of intellect other than may 
vaguely stir within the narrow prison of 
364 



The Progress of the Race 

an extraordinary but unchanging instinct. 
" Show us/' they say, "a single case where 
the pressure of events has inspired them 
with the idea, for instance, of substituting 
clay or mortar for wax or propolis ; show 
us this, and we will admit their capacity 
for reasoning." 

This argument, that Romanes refers to 
as the "question-begging argument," and 
that might also be termed the " insatiable 
argument," is exceedingly dangerous, and, 
if applied to man, would take us very far. 
Examine it closely, and you find that it 
emanates from the " mere common- 
sense," which is often so harmful ; the 
" common-sense " that replied to Galileo : 
" The earth does not turn, for I can see 
the sun move in the sky, rise in the 
morning and sink in the evening ; and 
nothing can prevail over the testimony of 
my eyes." Common-sense makes an 
admirable, and necessary, background for 
365 



The Life of the Bee 

the mind ; but unless it be watched by a 
lofty disquiet ever ready to remind it, 
when occasion demand, of the infinity of 
its ignorance, it dwindles into the mere 
routine of the baser side of our intellect. 
But the bees have themselves answered 
the objection Messrs. Kirby and Spence 
advanced. Scarcely had it been formu- 
lated when another naturalist, Andrew 
Knight, having covered the bark of some 
diseased trees with a kind of cement made 
of turpentine and wax, discovered that his 
bees were entirely renouncing the collec- 
tion of propolis, and exclusively using 
this unknown matter, which they had 
quickly tested and adopted, and found in 
abundant quantities, ready prepared, in 
the vicinity of their dwelling. 

And indeed, one-half of the science 

and practice of apiculture consists in 

giving free rein to the spirit of initiative 

possessed by the bees, and in providing 

366 



The Progress of the Race 

their enterprising intellect with opportuni- 
ties for veritable discoveries and veritable 
inventions. Thus, for instance, to aid in 
the rearing of the larvae and nymphs, the 
bee-keeper will scatter a certain quantity 
of flour close to the hive when the pollen 
is scarce of which these consume an enor- 
mous quantity. In a state of nature, in 
the heart of their native forests in the 
Asiatic valleys, where they existed prob- 
ably long before the tertiary epoch, the 
bees can evidently never have met with 
a substance of this kind. And yet, if 
care be taken to " bait" some of them 
with it, by placing them on the flour, 
they will touch it and test it, they will 
perceive that its properties more or less 
resemble those possessed by the dust of 
the anthers ; they will spread the news 
among their sisters, and we shall soon 
find every forager hastening to this un- 
expected, incomprehensible food, which, 
367 



The Life of the Bee 

in their hereditary memory, must be in- 
separable from the calyx of flowers where 
their flight, for so many centuries past, 
has been sumptuously and voluptuously 
welcomed. 

[98] 

It is a little more than a hundred years 
ago that Huber's researches gave the first 
serious impetus to our study of the bees, 
and revealed the elementary important 
truths that allowed us to observe them 
with fruitful result. Barely fifty years 
have passed since the foundation of ra- 
tional, practical apiculture was rendered 
possible by means of the movable combs 
and frames devised by Dzierzon and 
Langstroth, and the hive ceased to be 
the inviolable abode wherein all came to 
pass in a mystery from which death alone 
stripped the veil. And lastly, less than 
fifty years have elapsed since the improve- 
rs 



The Progress of the Race 

ments of the microscope, of the ento- 
mologist's laboratory, revealed the precise 
secret of the principal organs of the 
workers, of the mother, and the males. 
Need we wonder if our knowledge be 
as scanty as our experience ? The bees 
have existed many thousands of years; 
we have watched them for ten or twelve 
lustres. And if it could even be proved 
that no change has occurred in the hive 
since we first opened it, should we have 
the right to conclude that nothing had 
changed before our first questioning 
glance? Do we not know that in the 
evolution of species a century is but as a 
drop of rain that is caught in the whirl 
of the river, and that millenaries glide as 
swiftly over the life of universal matter 
as single years over the history of a 
people ? 



24 369 



The Life of the Bee 

[99] 

But there is no warrant for the state- 
ment that the habits of the bees are un- 
changed. If we examine them with an 
unbiassed eye, and without emerging 
from the small area lit by our actual ex- 
perience, we shall, on the contrary, dis- 
cover marked variations. And who shall 
tell how many escape us ? Were an ob- 
server of a hundred and fifty times our 
height and about seven hundred and fifty 
thousand times our importance (these 
being the relations of stature and weight 
in which we stand to the humble honey- 
fly), one who knew not our language, and 
was endowed with senses totally different 
from our own ; were such an one to have 
been studying us, he would recognise 
certain curious material transformations 
in the course of the last two thirds of 
the century, but would be totally un- 
37° 



The Progress of the Race 

able to form any conception of our moral, 
social, political, economic or religious 
evolution. 

The most likely of all the scientific 
hypotheses will presently permit us to 
connect our domestic bee with the great 
tribe of the " Apiens," which embraces 
all wild bees, and where its ancestors are 
probably to be found. We shall then 
perceive physiological, social, economic, 
industrial, and architectural transforma- 
tions more extraordinary than those of 
our human evolution. But for the mo- 
ment we will limit ourselves to our do- 
mestic bee properly so called. Of thesej 
sixteen fairly distinct species are known ; 
but, essentially, whether we consider the 
Apis Dorsata, the largest known to us, or 
the Apis Florea, which is the smallest, 
the insect is always exactly the same, ex- 
cept for the slight modifications induced 
by the climate and by the conditions 
37 1 



The Life of the Bee 

whereto it has had to conform. 1 The 
difference between these various species 
is scarcely greater than that between an 
Englishman and a Russian, a Japanese 
and a European. In these preliminary 
remarks, therefore, we will confine our- 
selves to what actually lies within the 
range of our eyes, refusing the aid of 
hypothesis, be this never so probable or 
so imperious. We shall mention no facts 

1 The scientific classification of the domestic bee is 
as follows : 

Class Insecta 

Order Hymenoptera 

Family Apidae 

Genus Apis 

Species Mellifica 

The term " Mellifica " is that of the Linnasan 
classification. It is not of the happiest, for all the 
Apidae, with the exception of certain parasites per- 
haps, are producers of honey. Scopoli uses the 
term "Cerifera" ; Reaumur " Domestica " ; Geof- 
froy "Gregaria." The "Apis Ligustica," the 
Italian bee, is another variety of the " Mellifica." 

37 2 



The Progress of the Race 

that are not susceptible of immediate 

proof; and of such facts we will only 

rapidly refer to some of the more sig- 
nificant. 

[ioo] 

Let us consider Hfirst of all the most 
important and most radical improvement, 
one that in the case of man would have 
called for prodigious labour : the external 
protection of the community. 

The bees do not, like ourselves, dwell 
in towns free to the sky, and exposed to 
the caprice of rain and storm, but in cities 
entirely covered with a protecting envel- 
ope. In a state of nature, however, in 
an ideal climate, this is not the case. If 
they listened only to their essential in- 
stinct, they would construct their combs 
in the open air. In the Indies, the Apis 
Dorsata will not eagerly seek hollow trees, 
or a hole in the rocks. The swarm will 
373 



The Life of the Bee 

hang from the crook of a branch ; and the 
comb will be lengthened, the queen lay 
her eggs, provisions be stored, with no 
shelter other than that which the work- 
ers' own bodies provide. Our Northern 
bees have at times been known to revert 
to this instinct, under the deceptive influ- 
ence of a too gentle sky ; and swarms have 
been found living in the heart of a bush. 
But even in the Indies, the result of 
this habit, which would seem innate, is 
by no means favourable. So considerable 
a number of the workers are compelled to 
remain on one spot, occupied solely with 
the maintenance of the heat required by 
those who are moulding the wax and rear- 
ing the brood, that the Apis Dorsata, 
hanging thus from the branches, will con- 
struct but a single comb ; whereas if she 
have the least shelter she will erect four 
or five, or more, and will proportionately 
increase the prosperity and the population 
374 



The Progress of the Race 

of the colony. And indeed we find that 
all species of bees existing in cold and tem- 
perate regions have abandoned this primi- 
tive method. The intelligent initiative 
of the insect has evidently received the 
sanction of natural selection, which has 
allowed only the most numerous and best 
protected tribes to survive our winters. 
What had been merely an idea, therefore, 
and opposed to instinct, has thus by slow 
degrees become an instinctive habit. But 
it is none the less true that in forsaking 
the vast light of nature that was so dear 
to them and seeking shelter in the ob- 
scure hollow of a tree or a cavern, the 
bees have followed what at first was an 
audacious idea, based on observation, 
probably, on experience and reasonings 
And this idea might be almost declared 
to have been as important to the destinies 
of the domestic bee as was the invention 
of fire to the destinies of man. 
375 



The Life of the Bee 

[101] 

This great progress, not the less actual 
for being hereditary and ancient, was fol- 
lowed by an infinite variety of details 
which prove that the industry, and even 
the policy, of the hive have not crystal- 
lised into infrangible formulae. We have 
already mentioned the intelligent substi- 
tution of flour for pollen, and of an arti- 
ficial cement for propolis. We have seen 
with what skill the bees are able to adapt 
to their needs the occasionally discon- 
certing dwellings into which they are in- 
troduced, and the surprising adroitness 
wherewith they turn combs of foundation- 
wax to good account. They display ex- 
traordinary ingenuity in their manner of 
handling these marvellous combs, which 
are so strangely useful, and yet incomplete, 
In point of fact, they meet man half-way. 
Let us imagine that we had for centuries 
37 6 



The Progress of the Race 

past been erecting cities, not with stones, 
bricks, and lime, but with some pliable 
substance painfully secreted by special 
organs of our body. One day an all- 
powerful being places us in the midst of 
a fabulous city. We recognise that it is 
made of a substance similar to the one 
that we secrete, but, as regards the rest, it 
is a dream, whereof what is logical is so 
distorted, so reduced, and as it were con- 
centrated, as to be more disconcerting 
almost than had it been incoherent. Our 
habitual plan is there ; in fact, we find 
everything that we had expected ; but all 
has been put together by some antecedent 
force that would seem to have crushed it, 
arrested it in the mould, and to have 
hindered its completion. The houses 
whose height must attain some four or 
five yards are the merest protuberances, 
that our two hands can cover. Thousands 
of walls are indicated by signs that hint 
377 



The Life of the Bee 

at once of their plan and material. Else- 
where there are marked deviations, which 
must be corrected ; gaps to be filled and 
harmoniously joined to the rest, vast 
surfaces that are unstable and will need 
support. The enterprise is hopeful, but 
full of hardship and danger. It would 
seem to have been conceived by some 
sovereign intelligence, that was able to 
divine most of our desires, but has ex- 
ecuted them clumsily, being hampered by 
its very vastness. We must disentangle, 
therefore, what now is obscure, we must 
develop the least intentions of the super- 
natural donor; we must build in a few 
days what would ordinarily take us years ; 
we must renounce organic habits, and 
fundamentally alter our methods of labour. 
It is certain that all the attention man 
could devote would not be excessive for 
the solution of the problems that would 
arise, or for the turning to fullest account 
37* 






The Progress of the Race 

the help thus offered by a magnificent 
providence. Yet that is, more or less, 
what the bees are doing in our modern 
hives. 1 

[ I02 l 
I have said that even the policy of the 
bees is probably subject to change. This 
point is the obscurest of all, and the most 
difficult to verify. I shall not dwell on 
their various methods of treating the 
queens, or the laws as to swarming that 
are peculiar to the inhabitants of every 
hive, and apparently transmitted from 
generation to generation, etc. ; but by 
the side of these facts which are not suffi- 

1 As we are now concerned with the construction of 
the bee, we may note, in passing, a strange peculiarity 
of the Apis Florea. Certain walls of its cells for males 
are cylindrical instead of hexagonal. Apparently she 
has not yet succeeded in passing from one form to the 
other, and indefinitely adopting the better. 

379 



The Life of the Bee 

ciently established are others so precise 
and unvarying as to prove that the same 
degree of political civilisation has not 
been attained by all races of the domestic 
bee, and that, among some of them, the 
public spirit still is groping its way, seek- 
ing perhaps another solution of the 
royal problem. The Syrian bee, for 
instance, habitually rears 120 queens and 
often more, whereas our Apis Mellifica 
will rear ten or twelve at most. Cheshire 
tells of a Syrian hive, in no way abnormal, 
where 120 dead queen-mothers were 
found, and 90 living, unmolested queens. 
This may be the point of departure, or 
the point of arrival, of a strange social 
evolution, which it would be interesting 
to study more thoroughly. We may add 
that as far as the rearing of queens is con- 
cerned, the Cyprian bee approximates to 
the Syrian. And finally, there is yet 
another fact which establishes still more 
380 



The Progress of the Race 

clearly that the customs and prudent or- 
ganisation of the hive are not the results 
of a primitive impulse, mechanically fol- 
lowed through different ages and climates, 
but that the spirit which governs the little 
republic is fully as capable of taking note 
of new conditions and turning these to 
the best advantage, as in times long past it 
was capable of meeting the dangers that 
hemmed it around. Transport our black 
bee to California or Australia, and her 
habits will completely alter. Finding that 
summer is perpetual and flowers forever 
abundant, she will after one or two years 
be content to live from day to day, and 
gather sufficient honey and pollen for the 
day's consumption; and, her thoughtful 
observation of these new features triumph- 
ing over hereditary experience, she will 
cease to make provision for the winter. 1 

1 Biichncr cites an analogous fact. In the Barbadoes, 
the bees whose hives are in the midst of the refineries, 

381 



The Life of the Bee 

In fact it becomes necessary, in order to 
stimulate her activity, to deprive her 
systematically of the fruits of her labour. 

[!°3 ] 

So much for what our own eyes can 
see. It will be admitted that we have 
mentioned some curious facts, which by 
no means support the theory that every 
intelligence is arrested, every future clear- 
ly defined, save only the intelligence and 
future of man. 

But if we choose to accept for one mo- 
ment the hypothesis of evolution, the 
spectacle widens, and its uncertain, gran- 
diose light soon attains our own destinies. 
Whoever brings careful attention to bear 
will scarcely deny, even though it be not 
evident, the presence in nature of a will 
that tends to raise a portion of matter to 

where they find sugar in abundance during the whole 

year, will entirely abandon their visits to the flowers. 

382 



The Progress of the Race 

a subtler and perhaps better condition, 
and to penetrate its substance little by 
little with a mystery-laden fluid that we at 
first term life, then instinct, and finally 
intelligence ; a will that, for an end we 
know not, organises, strengthens, and fa- 
cilitates the existence of all that is. There 
can be no certainty, and yet many in- 
stances invite us to believe that, were an 
actual estimate possible, the quantity of 
matter that has raised itself from its begin- 
nings would be found to be ever increas- 
ing. A fragilf remark, I admit, but the 
only one we can make on the hidden force 
that leads us ; and it stands for much in a 
world where confidence in life, until certi- 
tude to the contrary reach us, must remain 
the first of all our duties, at times even 
when life itself conveys no encouraging 
clearness to us. 

I know all that may be urged against 
the theory of evolution. In its favour 
3% 



The Life of the Bee 

are numerous proofs and most powerful 
arguments, which yet do not carry irre- 
sistible conviction. We must beware of 
abandoning ourselves unreservedly to the 
prevailing truths of our time. A hundred 
years hence, many chapters of a book 
instinct to-day with this truth, will appear 
as ancient as the philosophical writings of 
the eighteenth century seem to us now, 
full as they are of a too perfect and non- 
existing man, or as so many works of the 
seventeenth century, whose value is less- 
ened by their conception of a harsh and 
narrow god. 

Nevertheless, when it is impossible to 
know what the truth of a thing may be, 
it is well to accept the hypothesis that 
appeals the most urgently to the reason 
of men at the period when we happen to 
have come into the world. The chances 
are that it will be false ; but so long as 
we believe it to be true it will serve a use- 
384 



The Progress of the Race 

fill purpose by restoring our courage and 
stimulating research in a new direction. 
It might at the first glance seem wiser, 
perhaps, instead of advancing these in- 
genious suppositions, simply to say the 
profound truth, which is that we do not 
know. But this truth could only be help- 
ful were it written that we never shall 
know. In the meanwhile it would induce 
a state of stagnation within us more per- 
nicious than the most vexatious illusions. 
We are so constituted that nothing takes 
us further or leads us higher than the 
leaps made by our errors. In point of 
fact we owe the little we have learned to 
hypotheses that were always hazardous 
and often absurd, and, as a general rule, 
less discreet than they are to-day. They 
were unwise, perhaps, but they kept alive 
the ardour for research. To the traveller, 
shivering with cold, who reaches the hu- 
man Hostelry, it matters little whether he 

25 38S 



The Life of the Bee 

by whose side he seats himself, he who 
has guarded the hearth, be blind or very 
old. So long as the fire still burn that he 
has been watching, he has done as much 
as the best could have done. Well for 
us if we can transmit this ardour, not as 
we received it, but added to by ourselves ; 
and nothing will add to it more than this 
hypothesis of evolution, which goads us to 
question with an ever severer method and 
ever increasing zeal all that exists on the 
earth's surface and in its entrails, in the 
depths of the sea and expanse of the sky. 
Reject it, and what can we set up against it, 
what can we put in its place ? There is 
but the grand confession of scientific igno- 
rance, aware of its knowing nothing — but 
this is habitually sluggish, and calculated 
to discourage the curiosity more needful 
to man than wisdom — or the hypothesis 
of the fixity of the species and of divine 
creation, which is less demonstrable than 
3 Se> 



The Progress of the Race 

the other, banishes for all time the living 
elements of the problem, and explains 
nothing. 

[ IQ 4] 
Of wild bees approximately 4500 vari- 
eties are known. It need scarcely be said 
that we shall not go through the list. 
Some day, perhaps, a profound study, 
and searching experiments and observa- 
tions of a kind hitherto unknown, that 
would demand more than one lifetime, 
will throw a decisive light upon the his- 
tory of the bee's evolution. All that 
we can do now is to enter this veiled re- 
gion of supposition, and, discarding all posi- 
tive statement, attempt to follow a tribe 
of hymenoptera in their progress towards 
a more intelligent existence, towards a little 
more security and comfort, lightly indi- 
cating the salient features of this ascen- 
sion that is spread over many thousands 
3*7 



The Life of the Bee 

of years. The tribe in question is already 
known to us ; it is that of the " Apiens," 
whose essential characteristics are so 'dis- 
tinct and well-marked that one is inclined 
to credit all its members with one common 
ancestor. 1 

The disciples of Darwin, Hermann 
Miiller among others, consider a little 
wild bee, the Prosopis, which is to be 
found all over the universe, as the actual 
representative of the primitive bee whence 
all have issued that are known to us 
to-day. 

The unfortunate Prosopis stands more 

1 It is important that the terms we shall succes- 
sively employ, adopting the classification of M. £mile 
Blanchard, — « APIENS, APID^E and APITAE, — 
should not be confounded. The tribe of the Apiens 
comprises all families of bees. The Apidae constitute 
the first of these families, and are subdivided into three 
groups : the Meliponae, the Apitae, and the Bombi 
(humble-bees). And, finally, the Apitae include all 
the different varieties of our domestic bees. 
383 



The Progress of the Race 

or less in the same relation to the inhabi- 
tants of our hives as the cave-dwellers to 
the fortunate who live in our great cities. 
You will probably more than once have 
seen her fluttering about the bushes, in 
a deserted corner of your garden, without 
realising that you were carelessly watching 
the venerable ancestor to whom we prob- 
ably owe most of our flowers and fruits 
(for it is actually estimated that more than 
a hundred thousand varieties of plants 
would disappear if the bees did not visit 
them) and possibly even our civilisation, 
for in these mysteries all things inter- 
twine. She is nimble and attractive, the 
variety most common in France being 
elegantly marked with white on a black 
background. But this elegance hides an 
inconceivable poverty. She leads a life 
of starvation. She is almost naked, 
whereas her sisters are clad in a warm 
and sumptuous fleece. She has not, like 
389 



The Life of the Bee 

the Apidae, baskets to gather the pollen, 
nor, in their default, the tuft of the 
Andrenae, nor the ventral brush of the 
Gastrilegidae. Her tiny claws must labor- 
iously gather the powder from the calices, 
which powder she needs must swallow 
in order to take it back to her lair. She 
has no implements other than her tongue, 
her mouth and her claws ; but her tongue 
is too short, her legs are feeble, and her 
mandibles without strength. Unable to 
produce wax, bore holes through wood, 
or dig in the earth, she contrives clumsy 
galleries in the tender pith of dry berries ; 
erects a few awkward cells, stores these 
with a little food for the offspring she 
never will see ; and then, having accom- 
plished this poor task of hers, that tends 
she knows not whither and of whose aim 
we are no less ignorant, she goes off and 
dies in a corner, as solitarily as she had 
lived. 

39° 



The Progress of the Race 

We shall pass over many intermediary 
species, wherein we may see the gradual 
lengthening of the tongue, enabling more 
nectar to be extracted from the cups of 
corollas, and the dawning formation and 
subsequent development of the appara- 
tus for collecting pollen, — hairs, tufts, 
brushes on the tibia, on the tarsus, and 
abdomen, — as also claws and mandibles 
becoming stronger, useful secretions being 
formed, and the genius that presides over 
the construction of dwellings seeking 
and rinding extraordinary improvement 
in every direction. Such a study would 
need a whole volume. I will merely 
outline a chapter of it, less than a chapter, 
a page, which shall show how the hesitat- 
ing endeavours of the will to live and be 
happier result in the birth, development, 
and affirmation of social intelligence. 
39 1 



The Life of the Bee 

We have seen the unfortunate Prosopis 
silently bearing her solitary little destiny 
in the midst of this vast universe charged 
with terrible forces. A certain number 
of her sisters, belonging to species already 
more skilful and better supplied with 
utensils, such as the well-clad Colletes, 
or the marvellous cutter of rose-leaves, 
the Megachile Centuncularis, live in 
an isolation no less profound ; and if 
by chance some creature attach itself to 
them, and share their dwelling, it will 
either be an enemy, or, more often, a 
parasite. 

For the world of bees is peopled with 
phantoms stranger than our own ; and 
many a species will thus have a kind of 
mysterious and inactive double, exactly 
similar to the victim it has selected, save 
only that its immemorial idleness has 
caused it to lose one by one its imple- 
ments of labour, and that it exists solely 
39 2 



The Progress of the Race 

at the expense of the working type of 
its race. 1 

Among the bees, however, which are 
somewhat too arbitrarily termed the " sol- 
itary Apidae," the social instinct already 
is smouldering, like a flame crushed be- 
neath the overwhelming weight of matter 
that stifles all primitive life. And here 
and there, in unexpected directions, as 
though reconnoitring, with timid and 
sometimes fantastic outbursts, it will 
succeed in piercing the mass that op- 

1 The humble-bees, for instance, have the Psithyri 
as parasites, while the Stelites live on the Anthidia. 
•' As regards the frequent identity of the parasite with 
its victim, " M. J. Perez very justly remarks in his book 
"The Bees,' , "one must necessarily admit that the 
two genera are only different forms of the same type, 
and are united to each other by the closest affinity. And 
to naturalists who believe in the theory of evolution 
this relationship is not purely ideal, but real. The 
parasitic genus must be regarded as merely a branch 
of the foraging genus, having lost its foraging organs 
because of its adaptation to parasitic life." 

393 



The Life of the Bee 

presses it, the pyre that some day shall 
feed its triumph. 

If in this world all things be matter, 
this is surely its most immaterial move- 
ment. Transition is called for from a 
precarious, egotistic and incomplete life 
to a life that shall be fraternal, a little 
more certain, a little more happy. The 
spirit must ideally unite that which in the 
body is actually separate ; the individual 
must sacrifice himself for the race, and 
substitute for visible things the things 
that cannot be seen. Need we wonder 
that the bees do not at the first glance 
realise what we have not yet disentangled, 
we who find ourselves at the privileged 
spot whence instinct radiates from all 
sides into our consciousness ? And it is 
curious too, almost touching, to see how 
the new idea gropes its way, at first, in 
the darkness that enfolds all things that 
come to life on this earth. It emerges 
394 



The Progress of the Race 

from matter, it is still quite material. It 
is cold, hunger, fear, transformed into 
something that as yet has no shape. It 
crawls vaguely around great dangers, 
around the long nights, the approach 
of winter, of an equivocal sleep which 
almost is death. . . . 

[ 106 ] 

The Xylocopae are powerful bees which 
worm their nest in dry wood. Their life 
is solitary always. Towards the end of 
summer, however, some individuals of a 
particular species, the Xylocopa Cyanes- 
cens, may be found huddled together in a 
shivering group, on a stalk of asphodel, 
to spend the winter in common. Among 
the Xylocopae this tardy fraternity is ex- 
ceptional, but among the Ceratinae, which 
are of their nearest kindred, it has become 
a constant habit. The idea is germinat- 
ing. It halts immediately ; and hitherto 
395 



The Life of the Bee 

has not succeeded, among the Xylo- 
copse, in passing beyond this first obscure 
line of love. 

Among other Apiens, this groping idea 
assumes other forms. The Chalicodomae 
of the out-houses, which are building- 
bees, the Dasypodae and Halicti, which 
dig holes in the earth, unite in large 
colonies to construct their nests. But it 
is an illusory crowd composed of solitary 
units, that possess no mutual understand- 
ing, and do not act in common. Each 
one is profoundly isolated in the midst 
of the multitude, and builds a dwelling 
for itself alone, heedless of its neighbour. 
"They are," M. Perez remarks, "a mere 
congregation of individuals, brought to- 
gether by similar tastes and habits, but 
observing scrupulously the maxim of each 
one for itself; in fact, a mere mob of 
workers, resembling the swarm of a hive 
only as regards their number and zeal. 
396 



The Progress of the Race 

Such assemblies merely result from a 
great number of individuals inhabiting the 
same locality. ,, 

But when we come to the Panurgi, 
which are cousins of the Dasypodae, a 
little ray of light suddenly reveals the 
birth of a new sentiment in this fortui- 
tous crowd. They collect in the same 
way as the others, and each one digs its 
own subterranean chambers ; but the en- 
trance is common to all, as also the gal- 
lery which leads from the surface of the 
ground to the different cells. " And thus," 
M. Perez adds, " as far as the work of 
the cells is concerned, each bee acts as 
though she were alone ; but all make 
equal use of the gallery that conducts to 
the cells, so that the multitude profit by 
the labours of an individual, and are 
spared the time and trouble required for 
the construction of separate galleries. It 
would be interesting to discover whether 
397 



The Life of the Bee 

this preliminary work be not executed 
in common, by relays of females, reliev- 
ing each other in turn." 

However this may be, the fraternal idea 
has pierced the wall that divided two 
worlds. It is no longer wild and unrec- 
ognisable, wrested from instinct by cold 
and hunger, or by the fear of death ; it is 
prompted by active life. But it halts 
once more ; and in this instance arrives 
no further. No matter, it does not lose 
courage ; it will seek other channels. It 
enters the humble-bee, and, maturing 
there, becomes embodied in a different 
atmosphere, and works its first decisive 
miracles. 

C IQ 7] 

The humble-bees, the great hairy, noisy 

creatures that all of us know so well, so 

harmless for all their apparent fierceness, 

lead a solitary life at first. At the begin- 

398 



The Progress of the Race 

ning of March the impregnated female 
who has survived the winter starts to con- 
struct her nest, either underground or in 
a bush, according to the species to which 
she belongs. She is alone in the world, 
in the midst of awakening spring. She 
chooses a spot, clears it, digs it and car- 
pets it. Then she erects her somewhat 
shapeless waxen cells, stores these with 
noney and pollen, lays and hatches the 
eggs, tends and nourishes the larvae that 
spring to life, and soon is surrounded by 
a troop of daughters who aid her in all 
her labours, within the nest and without, 
while some of them soon begin to lay in 
their turn. The construction of the cells 
improves ; the colony grows, the comfort 
increases. The foundress is still its soul, 
its principal mother, and finds herself 
now at the head of a kingdom which 
might be the model of that of our honey- 
bee. But the model is still in the rough. 
399 



The Life of the Bee 

The prosperity of the humble-bees never 
exceeds a certain limit, their laws are ill- 
defined and ill-obeyed, primitive cannibal- 
ism and infanticide reappear at intervals, 
the architecture is shapeless and entails 
much waste of material ; but the cardinal 
difference between the two cities is that 
the one is permanent, and the other 
ephemeral. For, indeed, that of the hum- 
ble-bee will perish in the autumn ; its 
three or four hundred inhabitants will 
die, leaving no trace of their passage or 
their endeavours ; and but a single female 
will survive, who, the next spring, in the 
same solitude and poverty as her mother 
before her, will recommence the same use- 
less work. The idea, however, has now 
grown aware of its strength. Among the 
humble-bees it goes no further than we 
have stated, but, faithful to its habits and 
pursuing its usual routine, it will im- 
mediately undergo a sort of unwearying 
400 



The Progress of the Race 

metempsychosis, and re-incarnate itself $ 
trembling with its last triumph, rendered 
all-powerful now and nearly perfect, in 
another group, the last but one of the 
race, that which immediately precedes our 
domestic bee wherein it attains its crown ; 
the group of the Meliponitae, which 
comprises the tropical Meliponse and 
Trigonae. 

[108] 

Here the organisation is as complete as 
in our hives. There is an unique mother, 
there are sterile workers and males. Cer- 
tain details even seem better devised. The 
males, for instance, are not wholly idle ; 
they secrete wax. The entrance to the 
hive is more carefully guarded ; it has a 
door that can be closed when nights are 
cold, and when these are warm a kind of 
curtain will admit the air. 

But the republic is less strong, general 
2 6 4 QI 



The Life of the Bee 

life less assured, prosperity more limited, 
than with our bees ; and wherever these 
are introduced, the Meliponitas tend to 
disappear before them. In both races 
the fraternal idea has undergone equal 
and magnificent development, save in 
one point alone, wherein it achieves no 
further advance among the Meliponitae 
than among the limited offspring of the 
humble-bees. In the mechanical organ- 
isation of distributed labour, in the pre- 
cise economy of effort ; briefly, in the 
architecture of the city, they display man- 
ifest inferiority. As to this I need only 
refer to what I said in section 42 of this 
book, while adding that, whereas in the 
hives of our Apitae all the cells are equally 
available for the rearing of the brood and 
the storage of provisions, and endure as 
long as the city itself, they serve only one 
of these purposes among the Meliponitae, 
and the cells employed as cradles for the 
402 



The Progress of the Race 

nymphs are destroyed after these have 
been hatched. 1 It is in our domestic 
bees, therefore, that the idea, of whose 
movements we have given a cursory and 
incomplete picture, attains its most per- 
fect form. Are these movements defi- 
nitely, and for all time, arrested in each 
one of these species, and does the con- 
necting-line exist in our imagination alone ? 
Let us not be too eager to establish a sys- 
tem in this ill-explored region. Let our 
conclusions be only provisional, and prefer, 
entially such as convey the utmost hope, 

1 It is not certain that the principle of unique 
royalty, or maternity, is strictly observed among the 
Meliponitae. Blanchard remarks very justly, that as 
they possess no sting and are consequently less readily 
able than the mothers of our own bees to kill each 
other, several queens will probably live together in 
the same hive. But certainty on this point has hitherto 
been unattainable owing to the great resemblance that 
exists between queens and workers, as also to the im- 
possibility of rearing the Meliponitae in our climate. 

403 



The Life of the Bee 

for, were a choice forced upon us, occa- 
sional gleams would appear to declare 
that the inferences we are most desirous 
to draw will prove to be truest. Besides, 
let us not forget that our ignorance still is 
profound. We are only learning to open 
our eyes. A thousand experiments that 
could be made have as yet not even been 
tried. If the Prosopes, for instance, were 
imprisoned, and forced to cohabit with 
their kind, would they, in course of time, 
overstep the iron barrier of total solitude, 
and be satisfied to live the common life 
of the Dasypodae, or to put forth the fra- 
ternal effort of the Panurgi ? And if we 
imposed abnormal conditions upon the 
Panurgi, would these, in their turn, pro- 
gress from a general corridor to general 
cells ? If the mothers of the humble- 
bees were compelled to hibernate together, 
would they arrive at a mutual understand- 
ing, a mutual division of labour ? Have 
404 



The Progress of the Race 

combs of foundation-wax been offered to 
the Meliponitae ? Would they accept them, 
would they make use of them, would they 
conform their habits to this unwonted 
architecture ? Questions, these, that we 
put to very tiny creatures ; and yet they 
contain the great word of our greatest 
secrets. We cannot answer them, for 
our experience dates but from yesterday. 
Starting with Reaumur, about a hundred 
and fifty years have elapsed since the 
habits of wild bees first received atten- 
tion. Reaumur was acquainted with only 
a few of them ; we have since then ob- 
served a few more ; but hundreds, thou- 
sands perhaps, have hitherto been noticed 
only by hasty and ignorant travellers. 
The habits of those that are known to 
us have undergone no change since the 
author of the " Memoirs " published his 
valuable work ; and the humble-bees, all 
powdered with gold, and vibrant as the 
405 



The Life of the Bee 

sun's delectable murmur, that in the year 
1730 gorged themselves with honey in 
the gardens of Charenton, were absolutely 
identical with those that to-morrow, when 
April returns, will be humming in the 
woods of Vincennes, but a few yards 
away. From Reaumur's day to our own, 
however, is but as the twinkling of an 
eye ; and many lives of men^ placed end 
to end, form but a second la the history 
of Nature's thought. 

[109] 

Although the idea that our eyes have 
followed attains its supreme expression in 
our domestic bees, it must not be inferred 
therefrom that the hive reveals no faults. 
There is one masterpiece, the hexagonal 
cell, that touches absolute perfection, — a 
perfection that all the geniuses in the 
world, were they to meet in conclave, 
could in no way enhance. No living 
406 



The Progress of the Race 

creature, not even man, has achieved, in 
the centre of his sphere, what the bee has 
achieved in her own ; and were some one 
from another world to descend and ask 
of the earth the most perfect creation of 
the logic of life, we should needs have 
to offer the humble comb of honey. 

But the level of this perfection is not 
maintained throughout. We have al- 
ready dealt with a few faults and short- 
comings, evident sometimes and sometimes 
mysterious, such as the ruinous super- 
abundance and idleness of the males, 
parthenogenesis, the perils of the nuptial 
flight, excessive swarming, the absence of 
pity, and the almost monstrous sacrifice 
of the individual to society. To these 
must be added a strange inclination to 
store enormous masses of pollen, far in 
excess of their needs ; for the pollen, 
soon turning rancid, and hardening, en- 
cumbers the surface of the comb ; and 
407 



The Life of the Bee 

further, the long sterile interregnum be- 
tween the date of the first swarm and the 
impregnation of the second queen, etc., 
etc. 

Of these faults the gravest, the only- 
one which in our climates is invariably 
fatal, is the repeated swarming. But here 
we must bear in mind that the natural 
selection of the domestic bee has for 
thousands of years been thwarted by man. 
From the Egyptian of the time of Pha- 
raoh to the peasant of our own day, the 
bee-keeper has always acted in opposition 
to the desires and advantages of the race. 
The most prosperous hives are those 
which throw only one swarm after the 
beginning of summer. They have ful- 
filled their maternal duties, assured the 
maintenance of the stock and the neces- 
sary renewal of queens ; they have guar- 
anteed the future of the swarm, which, 
being precocious and ample in numbers, 
408 



The Progress of the Race 

has time to erect solid and well-stored 
dwellings before the arrival of autumn. 
If left to themselves, it is clear that these 
hives and their offshoots would have 
been the only ones to survive the rigours 
of winter, which would almost invariably 
have destroyed colonies animated by dif- 
ferent instincts ; and the law of restricted 
swarming would therefore by slow de- 
grees have established itself in our north- 
ern races. But it is precisely these 
prudent, opulent, acclimatised hives that 
man has always destroyed in order to 
possess himself of their treasure. He 
has permitted only — he does so to this 
day in ordinary practice — the feeblest 
colonies to survive ; degenerate stock, 
secondary or tertiary swarms, which have 
just barely sufficient food to subsist 
through the winter, or whose miserable 
store he will supplement perhaps with a 
few droppings of honey. The result is, 
409 



The Life of the Bee 

probably, that the race has grown feebler, 
that the tendency to excessive swarming 
has been hereditarily developed, and that 
to-day almost all our bees, particularly 
the black ones, swarm too often. For 
some years now the new methods of 
" movable " apiculture have gone some 
way towards correcting this dangerous 
habit ; and when we reflect how rapidly 
artificial selection acts on most of our 
domestic animals, such as oxen, dogs, 
pigeons, sheep and horses, it is permissible 
to believe that we shall before long have 
a race of bees that will entirely renounce 
natural swarming and devote all their ac- 
tivity to the collection of honey and 
pollen. 

[no] 

But for the other faults \ might not an 
intelligence that possessed a clearer con- 
sciousness of the aim of common life 
410 



The Progress of the Race 

emancipate itself from them ? Much 
might be said concerning these faults, 
which emanate now from what is unknown 
to us in the hive, now from swarming and 
its resultant errors, for which we are 
partly to blame. But let every man 
judge for himself, and, having seen what 
has gone before, let him grant or deny 
intelligence to the bees, as he may think 
proper. I am not eager to defend them. 
It seems to me that in many circum- 
stances they give proof of understanding, 
but my curiosity would not be less were 
all that they do done blindly. It is 
interesting to watch a brain possessed 
of extraordinary resources within itself 
wherewith it may combat cold and 
hunger, death, time, space, and solitude, 
all the enemies of matter that is springing 
to life ; but should a creature succeed in 
maintaining its little profound and com- 
plicated existence without overstepping 
411 



The Life of the Bee 

the boundaries of instinct, without doing 
anything but what is ordinary, that would 
be very interesting too, and very extraor- 
dinary. Restore the ordinary and the 
marvellous to their veritable place in the 
bosom of nature, and their values shift ; 
one equals the other. We find that their 
names are usurped ; and that it is not 
they, but the things we cannot under- 
stand or explain that should arrest our 
attention, refresh our activity, and give a 
new and juster form to our thoughts and 
feelings and words. There is wisdom in 
attaching oneself to nought beside. 

And further, our intellect is not the 
proper tribunal before which to summon 
the bees, and pass their faults in review. 
Do we not find, among ourselves, that 
consciousness and intellect long will dwell 
in the midst of errors and faults without 
412 



The Progress of the Race 

perceiving them, longer still without ef- 
fecting a remedy ? If a being exist whom 
his destiny calls upon most specially, al- 
most organically, to live and to organise 
common life in accordance with pure rea- 
son, that being is man. And yet see 
what he makes of it, compare the mis- 
takes of the hive with those of our own 
society. How should we marvel, for 
instance, were we bees observing men, as 
we noted the unjust, illogical distribution 
of work among a race of creatures that in 
other directions appear to manifest eminent 
reason ! We should find the earths sur- 
face, unique source of all common life, 
insufficiently, painfully cultivated by two 
or three tenths of the whole population ; 
we should find another tenth absolutely 
idle, usurping the larger share of the pro- 
ducts of this first labour ; and the remain- 
ing seven-tenths condemned to a life of 
perpetual half-hunger, ceaselessly exhaust- 
413 



The Life of the Bee 

ing themselves in strange and sterile efforts 
whereby they never shall profit, but only 
shall render more complex and more in- 
explicable still the life of the idle. We 
should conclude that the reason and 
moral sense of these beings must belong 
to a world entirely different from our own, 
and that they must obey principles hope- 
lessly beyond our comprehension. But 
let us carry this review of our faults no 
further. They are always present in our 
thoughts, though their presence achieves 
but little. From century to century only 
will one of them for a moment shake off 
its slumber, and send forth a bewildered 
cry ; stretch the aching arm that supported 
its head, shift its position, and then lie 
down and fall asleep once more, until a 
new pain, born of the dreary fatigue of 
repose, awaken it afresh. 



414 



The Progress of the Race 

[.»*] 

The evolution of the Apiens, or at 
least of the Apitae, being admitted, or 
regarded as more probable than that they 
should have remained stationary, let us 
now consider the general, constant direc- 
tion that this evolution takes. It seems 
to follow the same roads as with ourselves. 
It tends palpably to lessen the struggle, 
insecurity, and wretchedness of the race, 
to augment authority and comfort, and 
stimulate favourable chances. To this 
end it will unhesitatingly sacrifice the in- 
dividual, bestowing general strength and 
happiness in exchange for the illusory and 
mournful independence of solitude. It is 
as though Nature were of the opinion 
with which Thucydides credits Pericles : 
viz., that individuals are happier in the 
bosom of a prosperous city, even though 
they suffer themselves, than when indi- 
415 



The Life of the Bee 

vidually prospering in the midst of a 
languishing state. It protects the hard" 
working slave in the powerful city, while 
those who have no duties, whose associa- 
tion is only precarious, are abandoned to 
the nameless, formless enemies who dwell 
in the minutes of time, in the movements 
of the universe, and in the recesses of 
space. This is not the moment to dis- 
cuss the scheme of nature, or to ask 
ourselves whether it would be well for 
man to follow it; but it is certain that 
wherever the infinite mass allows us to 
seize the appearance of an idea, the ap- 
pearance takes this road whereof we know 
not the end. Let it be enough that we 
note the persistent care with which nature 
preserves, and fixes in the evolving race, 
all that has been won from the hostile 
inertia of matter. She records each happy 
effort, and contrives we know not what 
special and benevolent laws to counteract 
416 



The Progress of the Race 

the inevitable recoil. This progress, 
whose existence among the most intelli- 
gent species can scarcely be denied, has 
perhaps no aim beyond its initial impetus, 
and knows not whither it goes. But at 
least, in a world where nothing save a few 
facts of this kind indicates a precise will, 
it is significant enough that we should see 
certain creatures rising thus, slowly and 
continuously ; and should the bees have 
revealed to us only this mysterious spiral 
of light in the overpowering darkness, 
that were enough to induce us not to re- 
gret the time we have given to their little 
gestures and humble habits, which seem 
so far away and are yet so nearly akin to 
our grand passions and arrogant destinies. 

[»3] 

It may be that these things are all vain ; 
and that our own spiral of light, no less 
than that of the bees, has been kindled for 

27 4.17. 



The Life of the Bee 

no other purpose save that of amusing the 
darkness. So, too, is it possible that 
some stupendous incident may suddenly 
surge from without, from another world, 
from a new phenomenon, and either in- 
form this effort with definitive meaning, or 
definitively destroy it. But we must pro- 
ceed on our way as though nothing abnor- 
mal could ever befall us. Did we know 
that to-morrow some revelation, a mes- 
sage, for instance, from a more ancient, 
more luminous planet than ours, were to 
root up our nature, to suppress the laws, 
the passions, and radical truths of our being, 
our wisest plan still would be to devote 
the whole of to-day to the study of these 
passions, these laws, and these truths, 
which must blend and accord in our 
mind; and to remain faithful to the des- 
tiny imposed on us, which is to subdue, 
and to some extent raise within and 
around us the obscure forces of life* 
418 



The Progress of the Race 

None of these, perhaps, will survive the 
new revelation ; but the soul of those who 
shall up to the end have fulfilled the mis- 
sion that is pre-eminently the mission of 
man, must inevitably be in the front rank 
of all to welcome this revelation ; and 
should they learn therefrom that indiffer- 
ence, or resignation to the unknown, is 
the veritable duty, they will be better 
equipped than the others for the compre- 
hension of this final resignation and in- 
difference, better able to turn these to 
account. 

[ II 4J 

But such speculations may well be 
avoided. Let not the possibility of gen- 
eral annihilation blur our perception of 
the task before us ; above all, let us not 
count on the miraculous aid of chance. 
Hitherto, the promises of our imagina- 
tion notwithstanding, we have always been 
410 



The Life of the Bee 

left to ourselves, to our own resources* 
It is to our humblest efforts that e very- 
useful, enduring achievement of this earth 
is due. It is open to us, if we choose, to 
await the better or worse that may follow 
some alien accident, but on condition that 
such expectation shall not hinder our 
human task. Here again do the bees, 
as Nature always, provide a most excel- 
lent lesson. In the hive there has truly 
been prodigious intervention. The bees 
are in the hands of a power capable of 
annihilating or modifying their race, of 
transforming their destinies ; the bees 
thraldom is far more definite than our 
own. Therefore none the less do they 
perform their profound and primitive 
duty. And, among them, it is precisely 
those whose obedience to duty is most 
complete who are able most fully to 
profit by the supernatural intervention 
that to-day has raised the destiny of their 
420 



The Progress of the Race 

species. And indeed, to discover the 
unconquerable duty of a being is less 
difficult than one imagines. It is ever 
to be read in the distinguishing organs, 
whereto the others are all subordinate. 
And just as it is written in the tongue, 
the stomach, and mouth of the bee that 
it must make honey, so is it written in 
our eyes, our ears, our nerves, our mar- 
row, in every lobe of our head, that we 
must make cerebral substance ; nor is there 
need that we should divine the purpose 
this substance shall serve. The bees know 
not whether they will eat the honey they 
harvest, as we know not who it is shall 
reap the profit of the cerebral substance we 
shall have formed, or of the intelligent fluid 
that issues therefrom and spreads over the 
universe, perishing when our life ceases 
or persisting after our death. As they 
go from flower to flower collecting more 
honey than themselves and their offspring 
421 



The Life of the Bee 

can need, let us go from reality to real- 
ity seeking food for the incomprehensi- 
ble flame, and thus, certain of having 
fulfilled our organic duty, preparing our- 
selves for whatever befall. Let us nour- 
ish this flame on our feelings and passions, 
on all that we see and think, that we hear 
and touch, on its own essence, which is 
the idea it derives from the discoveries, 
experience and observation that result 
from its every movement. A time then 
will come when all things will turn so 
naturally to good in a spirit that has 
given itself to the loyal desire of this sim- 
ple human duty, that the very suspicion 
of the possible aimlessness of its exhaust- 
ing effort will only render the duty the 
clearer, will only add more purity, power, 
disinterestedness, and freedom to the ar- 
dour wherewith it still seeks. 



422 



Appendix 



TO give a complete bibliography of the 
bee were outside the scope of this book ; 
we shall be satisfied, therefore, merely to indi- 
cate the more interesting works : — 

i. The Historical Development of Apia- 
rian Science : 

(a) The ancient writers : Aristotle, " His- 
tory of Animals " (Trans. Bart. St. Hilaire) ; 
T. Varro, " De Agricultural L. III. xvi. ; 
Pliny, « Hist. Nat.," L. xi. ; Columella," De 
Re Rustica ; " Palladius, " De Re Rustica," 
L. I. xxxvii., etc. 

(b) The moderns : Swammerdam, " Biblia 
Naturae," 1737; Maraldi, " Observations sur 
les Abeilles," 17 12; Reaumur, " Memoires 
pour servir a PHistoire des Insectes," 1740; 
Ch. Bonnet, " GEuvres d'Histoire Naturelle," 
1779-17835 A. G. Schirach, " Physikalische 

423 



The Life of the Bee 

Untersuchung der bisher unbekannten aber 
nachher entdeckten Erzeugung der Bienen- 
mutter," 1767; J. Hunter, "On Bees" 
(Philosophical Transactions, 1732); J. A. 
Janscha, " Hinterlassene Vollstandige Lehre 
von der Bienenzucht," 1773} Francois 
Huber, " Nouvelles Observations sur les 
Abeilles, ,, 1794, etc. 

2. Practical Apiculture : 

Dzierzon, " Theorie und Praxis des neuen 
Bienenfreundes ; " Langstroth, " The Honey- 
bee " (translated into French by Ch. Dadant : 
" L'Abeille et la Ruche," which corrects and 
completes the original) ; Georges de Layens 
and Bonnier, " Cours Complet d'Apicul- 
ture ; " Frank Cheshire, " Bees and Bee-keep- 
ing" (vol. ii. — Practical); Dr. E.Bevan,"The 
Honey-bee;" T. W. Cowan, "The British 
Bee-keeper's Guidebook ; " A. Root, " The 
A B C of Bee-Culture;" Henry Allen, 
"The Bee-keeper's Handy-book;" I/Abbe 
Collin, u Guide du Proprietaire des Abeilles ; " 
Ch. Dadant, " Petit Cours d'Apiculture 
Pratique ; " Ed. Bertrand, " Conduite du 
Rucher ; " Weber, " Manuel pratique d'Api- 
424 



Appendix 

culture;" Hamet, « Cours Complet d'Api- 
culture ; " De Bauvoys, " Guide de PApicul- 
teur ; " Pollmann, « Die Biene und ihre 
Zucht ; " Jeker, Kramer, and Theiler, « Der 
Schweizerische Bienenvater ; " S. Simmins, 
" A Modern Bee Farm ; " F. W. Vogel, 
" Die Honigbiene und die Vermehrung der 
Bienvolker ; " Baron A. Von Berlepsch, 
" Die Biene und ihre Frucht," etc. 

General Monographs : 

F. Cheshire, "Bees and Bee-keeping" 
(vol. i. — Scientific) ; T. W. Cowan, " The 
Honey-bee ; " J. Perez, " Les Abeilles ; " 
Girard, "Manuel d' Apiculture" (Les Abeilles, 
Organes et Fonctions) ; Schuckard, " British 
Bees ; " Kirby and Spence, " Introduction to 
Entomology ; " Girdwoyn, " Anatomie et 
Physiologie de l'Abeille;" F. Cheshire, 
" Diagrams on the Anatomy of the Honey- 
bee ; " Gunderach, " Die Naturgeschichte 
der Honigbiene ; " L. Buchner, " Geistes- 
leben der Thiere j " O. Biitschli, " Zur Ent- 
wicklungsgeschichte der Biene ; " J. D. 
Haviland, " The Social Instincts of Bees, 
their Origin and Natural Selection." 

4*5 



The Life of the Bee 

Special Monographs (Organs, Func- 
tions, Undertakings, etc.) : 

F. Dujardin, " Memoires sur le Systeme 
nerveux des Insectes ; " Dumas and Milne 
Edwards, " Sur la Production de la Cire des 
Abeilles;" E. Blanchard, " Recherches ana- 
tomiques sur le Systeme nerveux des Insectes;" 
L. R. D. Brougham, " Observations, Demon- 
strations, and Experiences upon the Structure 
of the Cells of Bees; " P. Cameron, " On Par- 
thenogenesis in the Hymenoptera " (Trans- 
actions Natural Society of Glasgow, 1888); 
Erichson, " De Fabrica et Usu Antennarum in 
Insectis ; " B. T. Lowne, " On the Simple 
and Compound Eyes of Insects " (Philosophi- 
cal Transactions, 1879); G. K. Waterhouse, 
^ c On the Formation of the Cells of Bees and 
Wasps ; " Dr. C. T. E. von Siebold, " On a 
True Parthenogenesis in Moths and Bees ; " 
F. Leydig, " Das Auge der Gliederthiere ; " 
Pastor Schonfeld, " Bienen-Zeitung," 1854- 
1883; " Illustrierte Bienen-Zeitung," 1885- 
1890 ; Assmuss, "Die Parasiten der Honig- 
biene." 



426 



Appendix 
5. Notes on Melliferous Hymenoptera : 

E. Blanchard, " Metamorphoses, Moeurs et 
Instincts des Insectes ; " Vid : " Histoire des 
Insectes ; " Darwin, " Origin of Species ; " 
Fabre, u Souvenirs Entomologiques " (3d 
series) ; Romanes, « Mental Evolution in 
Animals ; " id., " Animal Intelligence ; " 
Lepeletier et Fargeau, " Histoire Naturelle 
des Hymenopteres ; " V. Mayet, " Memoire 
sur les Moeurs et sur les Metamorphoses d'une 
Nouvelle Espece de la Famille des Vesicants " 
(Ann. Soc. Entom. de France, 1875) ; H. Miil- 
ler, " Ein Beitrag zur Lebensgeschichte der 
Dasypoda Hirtipes ;" E. Hoffer, "Biologische 
Beobachtungen an Hummeln und Schmarot- 
zerhummeln ; " Jesse, " Gleanings in Natural 
History ; " Sir John Lubbock, " Ants, Bees, 
and Wasps ; " id., " The Senses, Instincts, and 
Intelligence of Animals ; " Walkenaer, " Les 
Haclites ; " Westwood, " Introduction to the 
Study of Insects ; " V. Rendu, " De l'lntelli- 
gence des Betes;" Espinas, "Animal 'Com- 
munities," etc. 



427 



^jr-^r 








>z 











